


sunset town

by skiecas



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, for my 'let oikawa tooru be happy 2k18' campaign, this fic is literally just propaganda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 05:43:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14743049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skiecas/pseuds/skiecas
Summary: In the summer of 2020, Oikawa Tooru returns home from his first successful stint as captain of Japan’s national volleyball team. In one hand, he holds the undisputed weight of an Olympic medal, and in the other, his unresolved feelings for a childhood best friend.Two years down the road, reconciling his lifelong dream with his lifelong love proves to be the greatest challenge.





	sunset town

**Author's Note:**

> notes: 1) a godzilla replica that looks out over shinjuku district is, in fact, [a real thing](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N_TD-lCz4to/Vxjdr5IXMcI/AAAAAAAAVVQ/ywL88K24mZQO51dGqzq2SqpHG29fmL8ywCLcB/s1600/gozilla_07.jpg). iwa-chan is vibrating as we _speak._ 2) [this](https://i0.wp.com/farm9.staticflickr.com/8623/15940136497_1f91f55f2a_h.jpg?resize=1170%2C657&ssl=1) is the view at night from the top of the tokyo gov. building. to help set the mood! 3) all my love to [winny](https://twitter.com/beneathelm) bear for her endless support, read-throughs, iwaoi yelling, and reassurance that i’m not the worst writer to ever exist. i sincerely could not have finished without you ;v;
> 
> and lastly, on a more personal note: this april marked four years since my descent into haikyuu, and this fic was written as a huge, resounding _thank you!!!_ to this incredible fandom. some of you have even been with me for just as long (since the good old days of whitemiists *sparkles*), which is kind of unbelievable. i’m just so thankful to anyone who has ever been sweet to me about my writing, and i owe my life to furudate for creating this manga that means the absolute world to me C”:
> 
> thank you for these four years, and here’s to the beginning of the fifth! ♥

 

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

The bus shudders to life, then takes off down the country road spewing black smoke in its wake. Tooru watches it dissolve in the distance, waving animatedly at the high schoolers who’ve turned in their seats to stare at him out the back window. Stars glimmer in their eyes, translating into open-mouthed wonder; through the thick layer of laminated glass, he can hear the bottled exclamations of disbelief and awe, and his pasted smile stretches to overtake his face.

As soon as the bus disappears round the bend, his hand goes limp at his side. He looks out at the sleepy neighborhood, a sigh rushing from his mouth, before popping up the handle to his suitcase and beginning down the quiet path.

He’d been dropped off on a boundary street, no matter how much he’d fluttered his lashes and flashed his pearly teeth at the bus driver, asking if he could _pretty please_ be dropped off a bit closer to his destination, even if it was _slightly_ off the designated route. The driver had given him a crude look, unmoved by his handsome face and his general reputation, and simply told him to get back to his seat.

“He must not know who I am,” he huffs later, all to himself. “Didn’t he see how those high schoolers were fawning all over me? Anyone with half a _brain_ could figure out I’m a celebrity.”

A crow cries somewhere, mixed with the muted sound of a delivery bike passing by, but otherwise the street is silent. An elderly woman outside one of the shops watches him talk to himself and looks bemused by his extravagant hand movements. By the time recognition glimmers in her eyes and she turns to take a second look, he’s already lost to the distance.

His destination is a homely apartment building. There’s a tiny patch of grass lining the front, too pathetic and yellow to be called a lawn or garden, and the stairs creak ominously as he attempts to lug his suitcase up to the fourth floor. He looks completely out of place, in his tight-fit jeans and the designer shades on his head pulling back his hair, and there’s a very real danger of the entire building collapsing at any moment with just one wrong step.

But this is _home_ and he loves it.

The apartment is warm and empty when he lets himself in. With a click of his tongue, he makes a beeline for the thermostat and blasts the air conditioning before waltzing into the kitchen, rubbing his stomach under his T-shirt. He’s been on a train for over two hours and the journey to get himself here had taken over half as long, and he feels sluggish. The fridge is pretty barren, but he finds a packaged meal somewhere in the back and rips off the plastic before popping the tray into the microwave. Leaving his suitcase at the front door, he stretches himself out on the couch as he waits for his food, his hands pressed between his head and the cushion.

He can hear the soft rush of cool air blasting from the vents, fighting weakly against the rays of summer sun beaming in through the windows, but the apartment hasn’t properly cooled yet and it makes his eyelids feel heavy. Giving in to the temptation, Tooru shuts his eyes.

He is awoken some odd hours later, by something nudging his knee.

His eyes are unfocused when he blinks them open, only making out enough to tell that it’s gotten darker outside and there’s a mysterious figure looming over him.

“Oi, wake up,” the stranger says. A familiar voice.

Tooru smiles sleepily, more awake now. “Iwa-chan.”

“Why don’t you ever call ahead?” Iwaizumi grouses, picking up his legs and unceremoniously dropping them on the floor, so that he can take the seat they had occupied. The entire couch seems to shake under his weight when he sinks down. “And what’s with the whole suitcase? You staying long this time?”

Tooru blows out a puff of air, straightening himself as best as he can while still looking prim, even though half his body had sagged off the couch when his legs had been dropped.

“What kind of greeting is _that?”_ he chides. “You’re not even going to say hello?”

“Hey,” Iwaizumi throws out, halfheartedly.

He sweeps bangs off his forehead, informing him, with a rather clipped tone, “Unacceptable, but I’ll let it slide for now. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, if you can even count the cheap snacks at the train station as breakfast. No strength left in these bones for an argument.”

“And why haven’t you eaten?” Iwaizumi demands. He reaches out a bent knuckle, which he drives into Tooru’s forehead as if he’s reprimanding some child. “I’ve told you a million times to take better care of yourself, idiot.”

Tooru bats him away. “I was going to! I just fell asleep before the microwave went off. The state of your fridge is _horrendous,_ by the way, Iwa-chan. You can hardly lecture me.”

Iwaizumi blinks at him. “I live three bus stops away from a cooked meal. It’s not the same thing.” But he seems less inclined to begin on a lecture.

“You don’t think I get home-cooked meals? I’ll have you know the aunties in my building all _love_ me. They’re always doting on me, bringing me food and whatnot.”

Iwaizumi snorts. “That’s because they’re all trying to marry you off to their daughters, you doof.”

Tooru puts his lips together and hums something softly at that, but says nothing. He doesn’t tell Iwaizumi that warm, greying smiles had all turned into young and painted faces one day, pretty laughter and the scent of perfume hidden behind steaming pots of food and calculated kindness. He remembers a time, when he’d been young and made up of immaturity, when he had enjoyed the attention. Now, the few seconds when he digs for his keys outside his door have become the most excruciating part of his day.

Iwaizumi gets to his feet with a soft groan, and his couch echoes the noise. “I’m gonna shower real quick. It was a long day and I’m covered in grease.” He pauses in the hallway and tells him, “I saw the food in the microwave, but we’re not eating that crap when you’re here. There are still a few takeout menus in the drawer. Order what you want.”

“So generous, Iwa-chan,” Tooru hums, grinning.

In the time it takes Iwaizumi to shower, he moves his suitcase to the spare bedroom, reseals the filmy plastic over the packaged meal he had heated, and calls up the restaurant with the shortest delivery time to place his order. Iwaizumi steps out just when he’s hanging up, freshly showered and smelling like the same soap he’s used since they were in middle school, and Tooru drinks in the sight of him as if they’ve just reunited after years apart.

Time has not managed to move Iwaizumi one bit. He is still a shadow of the boy he had been back in their Seijou days, though a bit darker from the kiss of the sun and more muscled from the years of labor. But his perpetual frown, his strong jaw, even his rigid hairstyle—all of his defining qualities have remained the same.

Tooru will look at himself in the mirror and think he hasn’t changed much either. But he wonders, much too often, what he looks like through Iwaizumi’s eyes.

“You didn’t answer me about the suitcase thing, before,” Iwaizumi says, noticing that the luggage is no longer cluttering up the entrance.

“Yes, I’m planning to stay long this time,” Tooru replies, taking more care to set the phone back on the receiver than needed. He doesn’t move his eyes away from the device. “Is that a problem?”

“Of course not.” Steady footsteps approach him from behind, though he can tell by the dingy shadow on the countertop that Iwaizumi hesitates before running fingers into his hair. “Make sure you visit your family soon, too, okay?” he says. “Instead of just hanging around here the whole time.”

“You flatter yourself, Iwa-chan. I was planning to go tomorrow.” The tone with which he says this is airy, teasing, even if his face is unsmiling.

“Were you?” Iwaizumi sounds amused, like he doesn’t believe him. “Then, you won’t mind me calling my mom and telling her you’re—”

Tooru spins on his heel with a hot refusal burning his tongue, feeling and also probably looking completely betrayed, only to find his best friend smirking back at him. He opens his mouth, then blurts out, “I hate you.”

The bark of laughter is infuriating. “When you can’t think of anything else to say but that, it means I’ve won.”

“I _hate_ you,” Tooru repeats, then stomps purposely towards the couch, downstairs neighbors be damned. He hopes Iwa-chan gets a thousand noise complaints and gets evicted, he _hopes._ He hopes Iwa-chan has to come live with him in Tokyo then, and they could do this everyday.

Iwaizumi is still grinning when he joins him, but not anymore when the delivery person arrives at their door holding enough cartons of food to feed an entire army of Oikawa Toorus rather than just the one infuriating man taking up space in his living room. He pays off the order, then returns to the common space with his arms full, noticing also, perhaps for the first time, how viciously the air conditioner is blasting out cool air.

“I’d forgotten how expensive you are to keep around,” he grumbles. “What’s with this mountain of food, anyway?”

“You said I could order whatever I want,” Tooru reminds him, smiling innocently. He pops open the folded table Iwaizumi keeps slanted against the wall and perches it between them, and once it’s been sufficiently cluttered with takeout cartons, nods with some satisfaction. “I’m heading to my parents’ tomorrow and I’ll be there for a while. This should be enough leftovers to last you for a few days, at least so you won’t have to turn to those horrible pre-prepared convenience store meals until I come back.”

Iwaizumi opens his mouth, but snaps it shut just as quickly.

Tooru rips open the head of a packet of chopsticks, then holds them out towards him, lashes flickering. “I’ll let you pick first, Iwa-chan, only because I’ve recently made some enemies in international places and I’m _sure_ you don’t mind volunteering as my tester, right?”

Iwaizumi snorts, snatches the chopsticks, and plucks a carton without even checking its contents; they know each other’s dislikes well enough to know what to avoid on a takeout menu.

 _“Figures_ you’d go and make enemies at an event that was literally created for the purpose of world peace.”

“Envy will always follow success,” Tooru retorts, unfazed. He picks out his own carton, and is humming a little as he pries apart the flaps to peer inside. “Not everyone is a gracious as I, but what can you do?”

Iwaizumi prods the top of his head with a single chopstick, though he appears amused. “Nice to see your small town roots have at least kept you humble. Shittykawa.”

Tooru grins at him, glittery and perfect. “It’s not the small town, Iwa-chan, but the small town people.”

The rest of the takeout cartons get piled into the fridge for a later date, and they switch on the TV for the sake of having white noise in the background, even though they perch themselves on the couch and spend the evening catching up rather than actually watching it. Tooru has new tales to tell about practice, despite his last visit not having been too long ago, then asks after the people in their lives who had pitched up in Miyagi beside Iwaizumi. He takes the last pudding cup in Iwaizumi’s fridge because he’s Tooru, though he _does_ graciously offer to let his best friend lick the plastic covering; Iwaizumi laps at the smeared pudding, then puts the slobbery cover right back into Tooru’s hand.

“Iwa-chan— _gross!”_ He wipes his hand down the front of his jeans, retching.

“Yeah, I’m gross,” Iwaizumi grunts, kicking back on the couch. “Deal with it.”

“Brute! Caveman! This is exactly why your girlfriend left you!”

His eyes narrow. “Low blow. Is that why you’re really here, to have a go at me for getting dumped? You’re too late. Matsukawa and Hanamaki already took care of that, the assholes.”

“I would _never,_ Iwa-chan. Don’t lump me in with those insensitive excuses for human beings. _”_ Tooru puts a hand over his heart, looking offended by the very suggestion. It’s completely fake and they both know it. “My best friend told me he broke up with his girlfriend of two years, so _obviously_ I had to come straight away to offer my undying support, give you my shoulder to cry on.”

Iwaizumi considers this, then scoffs. “I don’t remember asking for your shoulder.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s a best friend telepathy thing.”

Tooru smiles at him encouragingly, but even so, Iwaizumi doesn’t seem inclined to begin crying on his shoulder any time soon. He simply stares at the TV, and Tooru does the same, not really seeing the drama that’s playing. Eventually he begins shooting furtive glances at his quiet friend, worrying that he had overstepped his boundaries, before remembering that the two of them have never _had_ any boundaries to begin with.

“Iwa-chan…” he tries again, much gentler this time. “You’re not _very_ upset, are you?”

Iwaizumi looks at him and must see the genuine concern behind his big eyes, because he reaches over to muss up his bangs in an affectionate move. “Nah. Not really. It was kind of going downhill for a while anyway.”

Tooru is surprised. “It was?”

“Yeah. We were fighting a lot recently, over stupid things. If she hadn’t ended it, I probably would have.” He shrugs, as if a two-years-long relationship was something that ended everyday and it was nothing to cry about. Iwaizumi has always been stoic, but this seems like a bit much even for him.

Tooru bites his lip, then says, “That’s too bad. I liked her.”

Iwaizumi gives him a funny look. “Did you?”

He has nothing to say to that.

Their food eventually gets cleaned up and the TV gets switched off, and Tooru doesn’t bring up the topic again. He does offer Iwaizumi the last bit of pudding left in his cup, who smiles, knocks his forehead, and lets him keep it all for himself.

Iwaizumi retires to his room once night seeps more fully into the apartment, but Tooru stays out on the couch for a while yet, just staring into his hands and thinking. He thinks of Iwa-chan and meeting his pretty girlfriend, of a phone call two weeks ago that had put hope back in his heart, calculated risks and butterflies on the subway, opening his eyes and the overwhelming surge of _relief_ upon seeing Iwa-chan’s face. Seeing that face, its familiar lines and eyes made of steel, he’d known then that he’d been right to come. It’s been a long time since he’s felt this certain about anything in his life.

On his way to bed, he lingers outside Iwaizumi’s door, staring at it and imagining the scene that might play out if he went inside tonight. But he only passes it by.

 

 

  
—

 

 

 

He gets the news during the qualifier tournaments. Japan are hosting this year so they’re exempt from competing, but the team watches the televised matches and Tooru scribbles notes into a pocket notebook on the things they can use later, for the high stakes. Their coach pulls him aside afterwards, when they’re both fresh and clean and the rest of the team is halfway out the door.

“You’ll lead them well,” he says. “You already do.”

The celebrations that night take on a double meaning, and many of his teammates say “captain” through hazy laughter as if testing out the new title. Tooru doesn’t drink much despite having become the guest of honor, still a bit dazed from the news. Not the news that he would be captain, which was a title he had always been vying for, but the news that suddenly all of his lifelong dreams were so close within his reach.

And yet, somehow, the moment feels incomplete. He looks out at the many blurred faces of his teammates, and wishes at least one of them was Iwa-chan.

He’s almost entirely sober when he returns to his apartment that night, and the surge of loneliness multiplies in his chest at his dark and empty quarters. There’s still a buzz somewhere in the back of his head, like he knows he _should_ be happy right now—he’s _dreamed_ of leading the national team since he was old enough to serve a volleyball over the net, since the days when he and Iwa-chan were each other’s only teammates—but he’s unable to muster up the glowing warmth that usually accompanies moments of happiness.

Spread out on his bed, he pulls out his phone to type out a message.

 _Iwa-chan, I made captain!_ He deletes it quickly, the news feeling strange and too impersonal just blurted out over a text chat.

 _I have something to tell you. Call me._ That also immediately gets deleted, more forcefully than the last.

His thumb hovers over the dial button as he contemplates making a call himself, but eventually he tosses his phone aside and sighs loudly into the dark room. It shouldn’t be this difficult. It shouldn’t feel this lonely and this incomplete, realizing his childhood dream.

It shouldn’t be this hard to be without Iwaizumi, but it’s never _not_ hard.

Staring dazedly up at the ceiling, Tooru reconsiders every decision he’s made that’s led him to this moment. He loves Iwa-chan more than he loves sweets and satisfying serves; he knows that all too well. And yet, he’s here aching all alone in a lonely apartment, looking forlornly at his phone and just wishing that it would ring.

 _I should be with Iwa-chan right now,_ he thinks, digging the heels of his palms into his tired eyes. His contacts shift, disturbed by the action, and everything blurs for a moment as they take time to readjust.

The world slowly comes back into focus.

And a flash of clarity crashes down into him.

He clambers upright, repeating aloud into the empty room, “I should be with Iwa-chan right now.”

Of course. _Of course._

He scrambles out of bed, grabbing all his things he would usually take with him for a weekend visit. With the stress of training and the upcoming Olympic tournaments right around the corner, he hasn’t been able to visit Iwaizumi in _so long._ Sudden longing clumps down into the pit of his stomach, as it hits him all at once how long it’s really been since he last saw Iwaizumi’s rough smile, watched him step out first thing from the shower, slumped against him on a beaten up couch on a mundane evening. He misses his best friend and his crappy apartment like a constant _ache._

It’s too late to catch a bus, so he takes a cab to the station and boards the fastest train out of Tokyo, which isn’t too crowded given the late hour. He makes out his own reflection when he tries to look past the window, and all he sees is an excited little boy with big, starry eyes, his lip caught beneath his teeth, trapped in a stuffy car with his family and waiting impatiently to return home to his best friend. Even back then, life next to Iwa-chan had always been infinitely better than life without him.

It’s a little before midnight when he reaches Sendai, and his cab brings him straight outside Iwaizumi’s building. He’s shaking a little; he doesn’t realize this until he almost missteps going up the tricky landing and his heart nearly ricochets out from behind his chest.

There’s this thrum of anticipation in his veins making him so nervous he has to wipe down his slick palms on his sweatpants, pat down his unkempt hair, swallow the croak in his voice.

He hasn’t felt like this in many years, maybe not since he was young and eighteen.

Outside the door, he digs for his set of keys and attempts to fit them into the lock, but his fingers quiver and he misses, once, then a second time, before finally shoving them into the slot with extra force. The sound of scratching metal keens into the night, impossible to miss.

Iwaizumi’s voice carries from the other side, bottled and distorted but distinctly _him._ “...s someone at the door?”

Tooru senses him approach, his footsteps heavy even in the distance. When he feels a presence directly on the other side, fumbling with the lock, is when he pulls the door open with a grand flourish.

“Iwa-chan!” he sings, beaming.

Iwaizumi, who had been vaulted forward with his hand on the door handle, catches himself only just in time from crashing into his body. Blinking up at him, looking completely blindsided by his sudden arrival, he blurts, _“Oikawa?_ The hell? What are you doing showing up at this time of night?”

He’s wearing a sleeveless tank and a pair of gym shorts—two of the most painfully abundant types of clothing that he owns—yet somehow he looks so incredibly handsome that something wrenches in a low region of Tooru’s stomach. It could be the streaming moonlight on his hard face, or the sharp line of his jaw Tooru’s spent a lifetime noticing, or the watch tied around his wrist that Tooru had given him five years ago for their college graduation. He doesn’t look like the same old Iwaizumi in his usual gym shorts. He looks like someone Tooru would want to take against the inside of a crappy metal door at the strike of midnight.

The thought bolts through him like a lightning strike. He sucks in his breath.

“Iwa-chan, I…”

Standing out here in this rustic hallway, grimy from his trip, positively _heady_ from this proximity, he knows that this is it. Years of navigating his feelings, going down winding roads, lonely nights in his apartment, the clench in his stomach whenever Iwaizumi laughs—it’s all been building to this.

He’s going to say it right now, isn’t he? He’s going to change everything.

“Iwa-chan,” he pleads. “Listen to me.”

Then a feminine voice drifts down the entryway, followed shortly by an immaculate braid and feathered lashes. Tooru glances up, and suddenly there’s a woman in a pretty yellow sundress standing inside Iwaizumi’s apartment, looking like she _belongs_ there. A lump slides into Tooru’s throat.

“Hajime-kun?” she says, looking between them curiously. “Who is this?”

Her appearance digs into Tooru’s chest like a shallow grave. He demands, propriety forgotten in his shock, “Who are _you?”_

She recoils a bit at his sharp tone, then looks anxiously at Iwaizumi by way of question. Tooru slowly turns his neck to look at him, too.

He’s turned red up to the roots of his hair, looking at neither her nor him but glaring instead at the floor. The moment stretches to the point of suffocation. After a pregnant pause, he meets Tooru’s eyes and stutters out, “I-I should have told you, I know, but, I didn’t think, it’s not...” He sighs, defeated, then simply says, “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

Tooru’s jaw clenches hard, to the point that it’s painful. It’s _so painful._

Then it unclicks but half a second later, and he carols, “Wow, Iwa-chan! Someone actually finds your gorilla face attractive? I am shocked and awed!”

Iwaizumi’s color deepens, but he derails the incoming rant by sweeping past him into the apartment, where he takes his girlfriend by the hand with all the grandeur of a prince and introduces himself as a proper best friend. “I do apologize for my earlier rudeness,” he croons. “You can understand my shock since Iwa-chan is _such_ a caveman, so a sophisticated lady such as yourself seems so high above his class.”

“O-Oh, no, he…” Pulling back her hand, she looks across the way at Iwaizumi with a helpless expression, who marches over to forcibly put distance between them and hiss, right in his face, “You are _such_ a jackass.”

Tooru’s answering laugh when he is pushed away flitters through the room.

After a few more similar interactions, Iwaizumi looks close to committing murder and she decides uneasily to leave them for tonight, giving them space to reconnect since Tooru had traveled all this way. Iwaizumi follows her to the door without protest, clearly in a hurry to put distance between his girlfriend and his obnoxious best friend, though he does offer her a halfhearted, “You don’t have to. He’s here all the time.”

She glances over his shoulder. Tooru positively _beams_ at her from across the room when he notices her gaze, but her smile flickers at the corners. “That’s, um, okay,” she murmurs, then backs out of the apartment with a reluctant wave, still looking past her boyfriend to his oldest and dearest friend, whose radiant grin hasn’t faltered since the moment it was first painted onto his face. It’s the last thing she sees before the door shuts.

Iwaizumi faces him squarely once they’re left alone. “Shittykawa, I _swear—_ _”_

“Iwa-chan, I didn’t get to tell you my good news!” Tooru speaks over him. He falls back onto the couch with a quiet _oof,_ then brushes back his bangs with a languid sweep of his hand. His nose turns up, and the sharp steel in his gaze translates perfectly into his smug look. “I had to come all this way to see your reaction when I tell you. Over the phone just wouldn’t do!”

Iwaizumi is taken in enough by his curiosity to stop looking homicidal for a moment. He considers him, though his eyes sink into suspicious slits. “What is it?”

His smirk upturns by a few hundred notches, and he boasts, “I made captain.”

The words feel stale like empty cardboard.

He’s dreamed of this moment since the day he and Iwa-chan first stepped out onto a court, vowing to rule together as kings. Becoming captain is yet another stepping stone in the path he’s paving for himself, has _been_ paving since he was a little boy. He wants Iwa-chan to be proud of him—and he is. Iwaizumi climbs on top of him and rubs into his hair and laughs for him, like the news was just as much his own to bask in. Tooru tries to laugh, too.

But he looks up into his best friend and all he wants to do right now is press his mouth to Iwaizumi’s jaw, leave open kisses there, drag his hand up the inside of his thigh, and murmur to him sweetly, _I think I’ve loved you since before I even knew what love was._

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

Tooru wakes the next morning to a vibration somewhere deep in his blankets. Sunlight cuts through the part in his dusty curtains, fanning across his face, and he throws an arm over his eyes to stop the sting that usually accompanies unexpected wake-up calls. It takes a few more seconds of contemplation before his bearings return to him: he’s in Sendai, in Iwaizumi’s apartment, and his phone is ringing.

He untangles it with difficulty from the blanket wound tight around his knees, peeking from under his arm at the name before picking up the call. “H'lo?”

“Don’t try to sound all innocent, mister,” his sister snipes at him. “Why didn’t you call me yesterday to tell me you made it here safely? I didn’t raise you to be like that. And are you really still sleeping? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Tooru’s throat burns, but he manages to drawl, “What kind of greeting is _that?_ Why do all the important people in my life have such terrible manners?”

She retorts, bluntly, “Don’t complain just because Hajime-kun doesn’t put up with your bullshit. And I’m not hearing any sounds of you getting out of bed.”

Tooru groans into the room, an ugly and exaggerated noise for her benefit, but kicks his blanket off to the side. He should have known telling his sister his plans to return home would have been a mistake, but they hardly keep secrets and she’s always had a way of wheedling information out of him anyway. The bed creaks under his weight when his feet plant over the edge, and he runs a hand down his face hoping it’ll clear his foggy mind.

“You didn’t tell mom I’m home, did you?”

“Is this my first rodeo?” she responds, flatly. “She’s in for a lovely surprise when you show up at her doorstep. Which I hope will be sometime soon, Tooru.”

“Today,” he promises. His bones protest when he stands, still not completely rested from yesterday’s journey, though a peek outside his curtains tells him it’s past noon and the world outside is wide awake. “Is she still… you know?”

“Bragging to everyone about her medalist son? Of _course.”_

He bites down, catching the skin beneath his lower lip. “No. The other thing.”

His sister is silent for a moment. He hears the audible sound of her breath freezing somewhere in her throat, before she releases it all with one resounding sigh. “Well, it’s been hard on her, you know, what with your friend what’s-his-name getting married last year and Harada-san’s daughter having her second child. I _told_ her letting you go out on all those dates back in high school was a bad idea. I mean, I’m no therapist, but it obviously meant something for your ability to form strong relationships and all that.”

Tooru frowns. “I have plenty of strong relationships.”

“But no girlfriend to show for it.”

He glares into his half-open suitcase, mumbling “who wants that?” with the receiver pulled away from his mouth, and thankfully his sister does not hear. She’s tutting sadly on the other line, and he imagines the ends of her mouth turning down in exact replica of their father.

“I don’t know what happened,” she sighs. “You and mom used to be so close, and now…”

He says nothing aside from a soft-spoken, “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Tooru. It’s probably my fault she’s latched onto you like this. She probably still hasn’t gotten over how I was never married. You’re her only hope now.”

Something lumpy rises up his throat and sticks itself there, and he swallows it down but with some difficulty. “Trust me,” he croaks, not completely managing to keep emotion from his voice. “It’s not your fault.”

If his voice sounds a little thick, his sister does not notice. “Well,” she’s saying, “it’s not like she’s dying for grandchildren or anything when she’s already got Takeru. Honestly speaking, I think she just wants a cute in-law she can gossip with.”

Tooru resumes searching one-handed for a T-shirt from his messy suitcase, hoping he sounds normal when he grumbles, “Why does she need an in-law when she’s got Iwa-chan’s mother? Those two never stop.”

His sister’s laugh rings bell-like through the speaker. A reluctant smile pulls at his own mouth, hearing it. Iwaizumi had told him once that he and his sister laughed in identical ways, and Tooru will wonder sometimes, hearing the tinkling sound from his sister, whether his own laughter also sounds so genuinely happy and free.

“You don’t understand the heart of a woman at all, do you, lady killer?” she tuts, though he can tell she’s teasing. “Don’t be too hard on her, Tooru. She just wants at least one of her children to have a normal life.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He stares at the sweatshirt in his hand. _I don’t know if I can do normal._

“I’m hanging up now,” she says, “but make sure you show your face around our place soon, too. Takeru’s been missing his favorite uncle.”

He brightens instantly at her words. “Did he really call me that?”

“Well… he’s still bragging to all his friends about you. Close enough, I say.” She laughs again. “Take care of yourself, all right? And stop bothering Hajime-kun so much. Aren’t you too old and successful for that now?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he gripes. But he’s smiling into his suitcase. When his sister nags, he feels loved and cared for in a way not many people can make him feel.

They hang up, and Tooru moves into full action. He borrows a duffel bag from Iwaizumi’s closet and fits a few sets of clothes into it, leaving his suitcase an unsightly mess in the corner of the bedroom to await his return. His lunch consists of quickly popping a few bites of food into his mouth while leaning over the kitchen sink, and then he cranks down the apartment air conditioning the way Iwaizumi likes to keep it when no one would be home all day.

It’s not until he’s standing at the front door, bag slung over his shoulder and shades resting on his head, that he takes a long look back into the apartment.

It’s a barren home, by most standards. Iwaizumi has never seen the merit of buying furniture that was not essential to daily life, no matter how much Tooru badgers him about decorative pillows and cool lava lamps. But there are framed pictures on the walls: magazine pages from Tooru’s short gig as a B-side model, back from his earliest and poorest days on the team, mixed in with more recent newspaper clippings, all lavishing praise upon the remarkable Oikawa Tooru, star captain of the national volleyball team and now international heartthrob. Tooru had hung them all there himself two years ago, but frankly, he’s still amazed Iwaizumi had never taken them down.

And it’s a shabby place, small and musty, with floorboards that creak and a thermostat that seems to regularly break. The water doesn’t always run, and when it does, it’s not always hot. Iwaizumi will grumble about nice landladies and short work commutes when asked, but Tooru knows the truth: Iwaizumi could live in some place much less rundown or inclined to fall apart if he only had to pay rent for a one-bedroom apartment—but then where would Tooru sleep, all the times that he visits?

Tooru lives in a grand one-bedroom in the midst of bustling Tokyo, because he’s selfish. And all the times that he returns to Sendai, he could go to his parents and his childhood home only three bus stops away from this place, but instead he chooses the spare bedroom in Iwaizumi’s apartment that is kept just for him.

“Because I’m selfish and I always have been,” he laughs, smiling bitterly down at the key in his hand.

With one last look inside, he departs.

Eventually he reaches his destination: a static building rather than a bustling station. He slips inside the tired office to drop off his duffel bag behind the desk, then enters the attached garage as if the _employees only_ sign on the door was only a suggestion. There are cars with popped hoods at every corner, though the mechanisms might as well be gibberish to Tooru; he doesn’t know much about cars other than he’d like to drive a bright red one someday, but he doesn’t really need to, not with Iwaizumi around.

A stare burns into his back, and he turns. A familiar face scowls at him in the distance, and he puts up a hand in cheerful greeting. “Why, hello there, Kyouken-chan. I hope you haven’t been missing me too much.”

Kyoutani stalks over. His sleeveless tank and the wrench in his hand suit him so well that it’s almost comical. “How many times do we gotta tell you, you’re not allowed back here,” is all he grunts.

Tooru clucks his tongue. “My, what terrible manners. I’ll have you know, I have _special_ permission from the owner himself.”

A scoff alerts them that someone else had walked over to join the conversation. “I don’t remember giving you any sort of permission, special or otherwise.”

“Iwa-chan!” Tooru lights up, seeing Iwaizumi approach, and the dramatic flair in his posture decreases by at least fifty notches. He sings, “Permission is _always_ implied when it’s between the two of us. Right?”

Iwaizumi simply rolls his eyes, then turns to his employee. “I’ll handle this guy. You can go back to what you were working on.”

Kyoutani nods once, throws a quick glare at Tooru, then retreats back to the car that had been assigned to him. Iwaizumi takes Tooru by the elbow and begins to forcibly drag him back towards the office. He stinks of grease and sweat from this close, likely from the afternoon of work and the unidentified black sludge marring the front of his T-shirt. Tooru might have outright told him so, back in their teenage days, but now, he doesn’t want to be let go.

Iwaizumi brings them back into the bliss of the air-conditioned building, behind the closed door of his office where Tooru had left his bag, and begins lecturing him right away. “You really can’t go in there, stupid. I’ve told you a thousand times. It’s dangerous.”

“Did a car throw up on you, poor Iwa-chan?” Tooru asks him, extra sweetly.

Iwaizumi doesn’t rise to the bait. “Nothing I can’t handle, after all the garbage you’ve spewed at me all these years.”

Tooru opens his mouth, a rebuttal burning his tongue, except Iwaizumi takes the hem of his shirt into his hands and peels it off over his head. The cotton fabric had been thick enough to keep the stain from seeping through; his chest is clean if not a bit sweaty. Tooru doesn’t say anything in all the time it takes him to pull a spare shirt from his desk drawer, fit it over his torso, and toss the ruined shirt into a sports bag to be washed at home.

Iwaizumi notices the silence and looks at him dryly. “How does his highness have so much free time to be loitering around my garage all the time anyway?”

He phases back into reality at that, remembering why he had come in the first place, then blurts out, “I’m going home.”

Iwaizumi seems surprised. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Today.” He sweeps bangs from his forehead, in a nervous habit. “Just thought I’d stop by and tell you, so you don’t come home to find an empty apartment.”

Iwaizumi hates that the most, even more than Tooru dropping in unexpectedly, which he doesn’t really hate at all but pretends he does for appearance’s sake. Neither of them is really sure who they’re keeping up appearances for in the first place, when it’s just the two of them.

“Thanks for letting me know. Uh...” He freezes, as if he’s suddenly forgotten how to move his own body. Eventually he reaches into the mini fridge in the corner of the room, tossing a can at Tooru before popping one open for himself, and collapses in his rolling chair.

Tooru stares down at the _Kirin_ label, smiling impishly. “Drinking on the job, Iwa-chan? Very unprofessional.”

Iwaizumi snorts once.

He perches himself next to the chair, the edge of the desk digging into the back of his thighs, and the two tap their cans together before taking the first sip. Tooru has never particularly liked beer, calling it the classless cousin of the alcohol family, but he’ll drink it if it’s with Iwaizumi. He’ll even eat dried squid if it’s with Iwaizumi, and brave those scary amusement park rides that drop down from the clouds, and sit through baseball games even if the sport is nowhere _near_ as interesting as volleyball. In moments like those—like _this_ —he feels less selfish and like he’s worthy of Iwaizumi’s friendship.

A fuzzy head bobs past the little office window, and Tooru wrinkles his nose when he sees it. “Does monk-cut still work here?”

“Who? Tanaka?” Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. “Are you planning to ever let that grudge go? It’s been ten years since we played Karasuno. You’re on the national team now, for god’s sake.”

He swirls his beer in the can. “It’s the oldest wounds that hurt the most.”

“That’s absolutely _not_ true. And what happened to all that _grace_ you were going on about yesterday?” He quickly speaks over Tooru. “I’m not canning Tanaka. He’s a good worker.”

Tooru harrumphs. “Then maybe _Tanaka_ can be your new best friend.”

“Ugh. You infant.” He’s grinning. “You’ve got no right complaining about my team anyway, when you obviously woke up past noon and didn’t even bother to shave before you left the apartment.”

 _“First_ of all, stubble only adds to my rugged charm. And I absolutely _will_ complain about whomever I choose! I’m practically part-owner of this place!”

“Part-owner, my _ass...”_

Tooru blows a loud raspberry at him, but has to hide an involuntary smile against his can when Iwaizumi laughs at the gesture. He feels childish and free: two things he’s only ever truly allowed to be when he’s next to his best friend. The clunky, portable air conditioner is making noises like a jet engine as it blasts out cool air, the echoes of clanging metal filter in through the tiny office window, and the aftertaste of his beer is mildly bitter as it lingers on his tongue. But this is the most peaceful he’s felt in a long time. A familiar place, familiar sounds, and familiar face. It’d be nice, he thinks, if this moment could last forever.

Iwaizumi passes the afternoon calling up clients for status reports on their vehicles, and Tooru, throwing wadded up papers at him from a distance and mimicking his “professional voice” as he speaks on the phone. By the time Kyoutani sticks his head into the office, Iwaizumi is _this close_ to picking up his computer and hurling it at him.

“Want me to kick him out?” Kyoutani asks, looking more than eager at the prospect.

Iwaizumi dismisses him with a wave. “Nah. I can’t just release him into the world, else I’ll be considered an accomplice to this public menace.”

Somewhere behind Kyoutani, there’s a bark of laughter that undoubtedly comes from Tanaka. Tooru huffs, blowing his bangs from his face. _Really._ It’s as if his best friend doesn’t even _care_ if he loses face in front of one of his sworn, mortal enemies, and tells him as much when they’re alone again.

“Mortal enemy,” Iwaizumi repeats, dryly. “You planning to grow up sometime _this_ century, Oikawa?”

“If the world wants to take away my youth,” he declares, “then it’ll have to pry it away from my cold, dead fingers.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t respond to this right away. He clicks at a few things aimlessly with his mouse, frowning at the computer screen, before catching Tooru’s eyes. Eventually he sighs, wheeling away his chair from his desk, and Tooru stiffens when he steps his way around and approaches. Iwaizumi taps his forehead when he’s close enough, though the action is light and clearly not meant to hurt.

He murmurs, “Stop trying so hard.”

Tooru’s throat tightens up. He always feels a little bit like crying, every time Iwaizumi notices things about him. But he forces himself to open his mouth and speak. “I’m trying a normal amount,” he says.

Iwaizumi doesn’t seem convinced. “Are you going to tell me the real reason you came back?”

He automatically looks up to the ceiling, avoiding eye-contact. He sees the stain up there, from three summers ago, when he had tried to surprise Iwaizumi with a cake for his birthday and his trick candle gag had gone terribly wrong. Iwaizumi had been so angry that his face had turned purple, but still the first thing he had done was snatch Tooru’s hands and inspect them, to be sure they were unharmed, to make sure he was all right. He’d known Tooru would try to hide the burn on his finger. He always knows everything, when it comes to his best friend.

“I can’t tell you,” Tooru admits, to the ceiling. “I can’t tell you until I tell my parents.”

He is met with another silence, heavier this time than the last. Iwaizumi stares up at his chin while he takes in the faded tiles of the tiny office, knowing he’s being evasive and unfair and that Iwa-chan is going to let him get away with it anyway.

Iwaizumi sighs, then expectedly moves back. “Okay. Fine, then. You’ve obviously made up your mind.”

“Mm- _hmm.”_ Tooru grins at him, his lips pressed into a thin line. “So please be patient with me, dear Iwa-chan.”

Iwaizumi plucks his duffel bag from under the desk and Tooru catches it one-handed when he tosses it at him. “Get going, then,” he grunts, gesturing him towards the door. “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled when you show up.”

“That _is_ the general emotion I seem to evoke in people.”

“Ugh. You couldn’t be more obnoxious if you tried.”

Tooru laughs and blows him a kiss from the door, just to prove him wrong. Iwaizumi scoops up one of the crumpled balls of paper at his feet and makes a motion like he’s going to throw it at him, though it never actually leaves his hand. Tooru laughs again, genuine this time, before finally leaving him alone in peace.

It’s gotten hotter outside, and he puts a hand in front of his eyes before daring to peer up at the sun. The ghost of a smile is still fading from his face, and he feels warm inside his chest—light and happy. Two things he’s only ever truly allowed to feel next to his best friend.

Looking into the bright sunlight, he thinks, _I’ve really made up my mind this time, Iwa-chan. I promise._

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

“It’s hideous.”

Tooru kicks at a piece of flattened cardboard, sending a thick layer of dust flying into the wind. The screech of something decidedly metal echoes in the decaying space, and he looks up warily at the ceiling as if afraid it would cave in.

Iwaizumi doesn’t see things his way. “I can work with this,” he insists. “Just needs a little cleaning, maybe a paint job. When we bring in the equipment it’ll look like a proper shop.”

 _“Ahh,_ the death traps,” Tooru drawls. “Can’t _wait_ to bring those in.”

“You know second-hand equipment is all I can afford right now. I’m still paying off this place.” He picks up a broom from the pile of cleaning supplies they had brought with them, then holds it out to the setter. “Now, Your Highness, are you just here to complain or what?”

Tooru puts on his most charming smile. “Why, I’m here to help my dear Iwa-chan, of course!” he chirps, already shrugging out of his hoodie. He takes the offered broom, but waves it a bit extravagantly in the air. “Once we instill a little bit of that irresistible Tooru charm into this place, business will be _booming._ That’s my guarantee.”

Iwaizumi hides a smile when he turns away.

It’s a week-long project. They’re in before the sun and gone in the darkness, made up of caffeine and muscle aches and paint stains, and the place slowly starts to come together. Tooru cleans, meticulously taking a rag to the windows or scrubbing at the floor, while Iwaizumi carries around a clunky toolbox making the neverending repairs. Iwaizumi lets him choose the wallpaper, and he briefly considers the tacky design on his sister’s curtains before deciding on something pretty and mint. There are a few mishaps—they find a rat living in one of the vents, which Iwaizumi carries out in gloved hands while Tooru locks himself away in the office until the vicinity has been deemed safe—but by the end of the week, they’re looking proudly at the finished product and it’s a good feeling.

On the last day, they sit together inside the garage for a late lunch. The equipment was scheduled to arrive tomorrow, so for now it’s just an empty room that’s too big for just two people, that echoes back at them every word they say. Tooru puts down a small handkerchief on the floor, and they sit on the limited space with their food and their half-empty beer cans, their hips pressed together.

“Thanks for helping me,” Iwaizumi says, turning his can over in his hands. “I know it was a lot of time and work.”

“If you know that, then you have to be _really_ successful. To make it up to me. Okay?” Tooru replies, smiling.

Their shoulders bump. Iwaizumi is smiling now as well, small but fond. “I don’t know about all that in a small town like this. But I’ll make it work somehow.”

Tooru perks up. “And we have to make a pact, of course. One day, when you’re successful, or when you finish paying off this place. You have to treat me because I’m the best friend ever. It’s tradition.”

Iwaizumi considers this. “Treat you to what?”

“Hot springs,” he replies, immediately. He’s spent plenty of time already mulling this over in the past week. “And not those cheap indoor baths either, that you can find anywhere. We’ll road-trip up to Hokkaido, just the two of us, and try out one of those luxury hot springs in the fancy hotels.”

The summer after their college graduation, after Tooru was offered a place on the national team, they had gone on their last trip. Tooru had funded it, though Iwaizumi had provided his rundown car and was also stuck with all the driving. Surviving on cherry popsicles and cup ramen alone, they’d road-tripped down to Osaka to watch the FIVB World Cup in men's volleyball with the tickets Tooru had spent a small fortune to obtain, spending the night at a shady B&B during their stay and praying that their car wouldn’t break down on some lonely highway. Tooru had taken a silver marker to the back windshield, to scribble _paving the road to success_ in big strokes across the glass, and Iwaizumi had yelled at him, first for the writing, and then for calling his car a piece of “junky scrap metal.” It’s hard to think of a memory more perfect.

“Okay,” Iwaizumi agrees, without needing to be convinced. “You want hot springs? You’ll get hot springs.”

“Yay!” Tooru throws his arms around him, giggling madly, and presses his cheek to the back of Iwaizumi’s neck. “Thank you, Iwa-chan! I love you!”

Iwaizumi is rough and plum-colored as he glares off into the distance. “Yeah, yeah.”

His ears have turned red and Tooru has the perfect view of them from this close; they’re like pink little buds and it’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen. Iwaizumi is the cutest thing he’s ever seen. He likes Iwaizumi’s pink ears and the scruff on the back of his neck and the way his eyebrows meet in the middle when he’s shy. He likes the ease of physical contact, and being close just like this, and the many “I love you”s like they were more than just best friends. He holds on a little tighter, feeling the echo of his heartbeat like it was shaking the earth. This moment is perfect; they’re alone, pressed up together in intimate places, and he feels fuzzy in a way he doesn’t think has to do with his half can of beer. It’s perfect.

Iwaizumi stiffens when an upper lip ghosts along his ear. Tooru breathes on the sensitive skin, noting how warm it feels under his mouth and how much he likes it.

Iwaizumi doesn’t push him away even though he’s clearly tense, but he warns, “Oikawa...”

“Iwa-chan, I…”

He’s going to say it, isn’t he? The moment is perfect and he can feel something building inside him, something desperate and age-old that’s been looking to come out for a long, long time. It’s beating on the inside of his ribcage. It’s burning the back of his throat.

He’s really going to say it this time. He’s going to change everything.

Instead, he says, “Iwa-chan, I want ice-cream. Go buy me ice-cream!”

Iwaizumi claps a hand over his ear, scowling. Lingering remnants of red remain on his ears and his face. “Good _god,_ you are the most manipulative little piece of slime I’ve ever _met.”_

Tooru leans in close and chirps, lashes fluttering, “Pretty _please?”_

He tries to place a kiss on Iwaizumi’s red ear, who pulls a pretzel-like maneuver to dodge and put him in a headlock, looking more enraged the more Tooru laughs and tries to wriggle free. Everything feels good like this, just the way it’s always been.

Iwaizumi ends up getting the ice-cream anyway. Tooru is humming as he unwraps the covering and puts the bar into his mouth—chocolate malt, his favorite—and watches Iwaizumi struggle with the mini plastic spatula that came with his cup of mango flavor. He has this exact memory of them from fifteen years ago, though they’re sitting on the front porch of his childhood home, drenched down to their sandals from their water gun fight. Tooru had asked for the ice-cream then too, and Iwaizumi had run down to the corner store all on his own to get it for them. Back then, Tooru had been the one who liked mango. But his pudgy hands had been too clumsy for the tiny spatula, and Iwaizumi had wordlessly traded his favorite chocolate malt, to spare his best friend from shedding his globs of frustrated tears.

“Iwa-chan,” he offers now, “do you want to trade?”

Iwaizumi looks surprised. “I thought you didn’t like this kind?”

“Mm.” He smiles vaguely. “It’s not that I hate it. I just liked that you would always take it for me.”

He doesn’t explain when Iwaizumi stares at him with confusion, deciding then that he’d keep it his own secret just a little bit longer. Fifteen years down the line, not much has really changed about them. But he likes it like this. Outside the world is quiet except for the buzz of the cicadas, and they don’t feel the need to disturb the peace with their chatter. He could close his eyes and almost pretend they’re stolen away in their own secret garden, or that they’re back on that old porch kicking their feet in perfect synchronization. It’s a perfect moment.

For now, Tooru decides, they’re perfect just like this.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

His mother is expectedly thrilled to have her only son show up at her door, like a wisp of smoke apparating from thin air. Tooru endures pats to his cheek and kisses to his neck before being allowed to come inside, where his father gives him an awkward one-armed hug and takes his bag away from him. He’s treated to a giant meal, and his room is still untouched even though it’s been ten years since he moved out of his parents’ home. Through his window, he can see Iwaizumi’s home across the street that was always like a second home to him as well. He feels almost bittersweet sifting through his childhood memories.

His mother lingers outside his open door before asking, “Will you be staying long?”

Tooru shuts his curtains, tearing his eyes away from his second home. “Mm. A little. I can stay for a week.”

“An entire week?” She looks delighted, and he almost smiles. “Then I have plenty of time to make all your favorites! And some of my friends want to meet you too, if that’s okay, Tooru. You’re still pretty famous around these parts; I’ve been keeping your memory alive. And, you know, you’re getting to be that age, and some of them have daughters—”

“No blind dates,” he talks over her, frowning. When she seems prepared to argue, he gives her a firm look. “Not this time. I’m tired of them. And, anyway… I need to talk to you.”

She frowns also. “About what?”

“I’ll tell you when we talk. Please let me know when you two are free.”

“Your father, too?” Hearing this, she begins unconsciously rubbing the back of her knuckles together; he recognizes it as her nervous habit. “You’re scaring me a little, Tooru. W-Well, I’ll see. Your father has a lot of work to get done, so I just don’t know…”

“That’s why I’m here for a whole week,” he assures her. His tone is kept light, though they’re both aware he’s caging her in, giving her no room to escape. This time, he really and truly has made up his mind.

“I’ll see...” is all she mumbles, before quietly wandering away.

Tooru collapses back on his bed once she’s gone, releasing all his breath in one, long exhale. It feels like the faded posters on his walls are smiling down at him, proud of his resolve, and he hides a smile into his pillow as well.

Visits home have started taking on a routine in the recent years; jogging through the park before sunrise; tea with his mother in the mornings; dodging questions about marriage from the neighborhood aunties; stopping by the high school to visit his old coaches; and calling up whoever he can think of for a reunion. He stops by the convenience store near his home and is taken back to two years ago, when his face was plastered on the walls and reruns of his matches were being played on the little TV in the shop window. In some ways, not much has changed since then. Some people certainly still look twice when they pass him by on the street, though he only smiles before hurrying about on his way.

In a few cases, it’s not possible to escape the notice.

Matsukawa watches with a bland expression as he signs off on a few napkins and takes a hurried picture with a fan, smiling sweetly all the way until they’ve left the diner and left him in peace.

His smile dissolves. Dipping his chopsticks into his soup, he complains, “My food’s gotten cold.” It’s not as satisfying bringing cold noodles into his mouth, and he makes a face.

“You’re so fake,” Matsukawa says, amused. “I understand now why Iwaizumi is always so angry.”

 _“Excuse_ me. I’m not fake. It’s called ‘not being rude to people to their face.’” He sniffs. “You guys should try it some time.”

“Why would we do that when we’re having so much fun just the way we are?”

“You really should be nicer to me, you know. I’m practically a national treasure, and you’re really lucky to have me— _stop laughing!”_ He hisses this across the table so as not to make a ruckus in the small diner, though a few people still look over and he has to duck his head to avoid humiliation.

 _“‘National treasure,’”_ Matsukawa repeats, happily tapping away on his phone. “I need to send this to Hanamaki, oh my god.”

Tooru quickly snatches the device and pockets it, hoping his cheeks aren’t flaming as red as they feel. “You’ll get this back when you behave.”

“Oh, are we roleplaying now?”

“...I _hate_ you.” He sinks onto the table, groaning loudly into the crook of his elbow. His cheeks are definitely aflame. “That was a critical hit. A direct K.O.”

Matsukawa is chuckling as he reaches across to lift his head back up. He sounds sheepish when he promises, “Okay, okay. I’ll lay off. Though you don’t exactly make it easy.”

Tooru bounces back within seconds, chirping, “You just have a terrible personality~”

“I don’t want to hear that from _you.”_

They quietly slurp their noodles in peace for a moment. Tooru missed this, he’ll admit it. They’ve not completely lost touch and they make every effort to see each other when they can, but it’s hard now to get all the old friends together at once. He’s nested in Tokyo, Hanamaki had made the move to Fukuoka for work and wouldn’t be back for another year, and all the rest also led such busy lives. Matsukawa had made special time to come out with him today, which he appreciates, and at least Iwa-chan had always remained someone close.

“How’s Iwaizumi doing, by the way?” Matsukawa asks, as if reading his thoughts. “Haven’t met up with him in a while. I’m sure you’ve swung by his place?”

“He’s fine. Not even heartbroken or anything, which was a letdown.”

He quirks a brow. “You’re upset that he wasn’t upset?”

“I was going to record his ugly crying face for future blackmail.” He sighs loudly. “There should be a limit to how cool and stoic a person can be, don’t you think?”

Matsukawa shakes his head. “First of all, you’re a terrible human being and I regret this friendship every day. Second, it sounds to me like those two were having problems for a while already, so he probably saw it coming. I had to cut him off drinking away his sorrows as far back as a year ago.”

Tooru looks up. “A year?”

“Yeah.” He ponders this for a moment. “Some time after the wedding, actually.” Noticing Tooru’s blatant attempt at keeping his face neutral, his face sinks into suspicion. “Something happened between you two, didn’t it?”

“...Maybe.” He blinks innocently. It’s completely suspicious.

Matsukawa rubs his forehead as if he feels a migraine spreading. “And here I thought we could leave all the teenage angst out of our thirties.”

“Excuse _you,”_ Tooru trills, pleasantly spearing a gyoza onto the end of his chopstick. “I don’t know about you, but _I’m_ not thirty just yet.”

“Mentally? You’re definitely not.” When Tooru does not contest this or even say anything at all except for some very obnoxious chewing, he sighs. “Seriously, when are you two going to end this… _thing_ you have going on between you two? It’s driving everyone absolutely nuts.”

“Hmm?” Tooru flicks at a crumb with his thumb, sucks it into his mouth, then says with immense ease, “If I’m lucky, by the end of this week.”

Matsukawa stares. “Really?”

“Why are you so surprised? Weren’t you the one just telling me to do something?”

“Well, _yes._ But…” He looks uneasy. “I mean, he _just_ broke up with his girlfriend. Don’t you think you should maybe wait longer than a few weeks to make your move?”

Tooru plays aimlessly with his food for a bit, then admits, in a quiet voice, “I’ve been waiting for two years, Mattsun.”

Matsukawa looks back at him with some sympathy, and Tooru can easily trace the pattern of his thoughts. That it’s been infinitely longer than two years. That Tooru and Iwaizumi have been skirting the boundaries of their friendship since at least as long as time itself. That even back in their Seijou days—through all their soft touches and lingering looks, their tactile habits, their inseparable bond, the way their captain would rest on his ace’s shoulder on quiet bus rides home, or how their ace would gently rub away the pain in his captain’s knee in the locker rooms—they’ve always been lovers without the label.

Matsukawa tousles his hair. _“Ahh._ Go get him, then. All right?”

A brief smile flickers across Tooru’s face in response.

“And what about your parents?” he wants to know, suddenly concerned. “Do they still think you’re _so busy_ over in Tokyo that you can barely come down to see them? They’ve got no idea you’re over at Iwaizumi’s place practically every other weekend.”

“Mm.” Tooru’s expression is grim as he resumes playing with his noodles. “I think they think we drifted. Not that I correct it. I don’t really talk about him much around them.”

A heavy silence settles between them at his words, and Tooru looks up to find a complicated expression on Matsukawa’s face: sad and sympathetic. Something about it is so crushing that Tooru fights the impulse to look away, thinking of difficult loves and thorny paths.

Instead, he leans in from across the table, teasing him, “If you keep looking at me like that, Mattsun, then I’m going to feel bad.”

Matsukawa looks down hastily at his bowl, and Tooru’s smirk increases by a few notches to really make him squirm. He seems geared up to say something, except one look at Tooru’s oily smile stoppers his words. In the end, he only mumbles, “Then go finally put an end to all our misery, would you?”

Tooru tips back in his chair, laughing up at the ceiling. “Will do!”

The rest of the evening is lighthearted, least of all because they try to keep it so; there are other things to talk about than just the unfairness of unfulfilled loves and uncertain futures. At the end of the night, they pay their bills and walk out into the warm, summer air, wandering aimlessly through the quiet streets just to make the night last longer. There’s no telling when this kind of moment will come for them again.

Matsukawa eventually sighs at the time on his phone. He’s reluctant to part, but, “I have to go. I’ve got the wife waiting for me back home.”

Tooru smiles. “Go on, then. Go back to your disgustingly happy relationship.”

“What’s disgusting is you and Iwaizumi still trying to pretend you’re just friends.”

“What’s disgusting is your eyebrows.”

“What’s disgusting is your _face.”_

They’re still doling out insults when Matsukawa’s cab pulls up next to them on the curb, when he gets in, when the driver gives them a bemused look because he’s pretty sure that’s an internationally famous athlete his customer just called a “toe rag.” It’s not until they’ve begun to drive away that Matsukawa suddenly rolls down his window, sticks out his head, and calls after him, “I want a picture for proof!”

“That’s gross!” Tooru calls back, as the car gets smaller in the distance.

“It was nice seeing you!”

“Nice seeing you, too, Mattsun!”

The car disappears round the bend, and Tooru falls back, still smiling to himself.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

The apartment is eerily quiet. Tooru can hear the floor shifting under his weight, the wheels of his suitcase gliding over the tile, even his own breathing. It’s well past time for Iwaizumi to have closed up shop and come home, and yet, the apartment looks completely deserted.

His lip protrudes. It’s been the most grueling few months he’s ever had to face, the most amazing few weeks of his entire life. He’s come home bent and bruised and _victorious_ , having defied all the odds, after fulfilling his greatest lifelong dream. Is it too much to ask that his best friend be here waiting for him when he returns home from the battle?

“Iwa-chan, so _rude,”_ he huffs, towing his own luggage in across the entryway like a common man. Nothing in him will let him admit that it’s his own fault, for showing up unannounced yet again. As a best friend, Iwaizumi should have just _known._

He abandons his suitcase halfway through the task, going in search for a light instead. It’s dark in the body of the apartment and he can’t see much past his own hand, but he stumbles along until his fingers hit something that feels decidedly like a switch.

He flicks on the light.

And chaos erupts.

_“—surprise!”_

A phone camera flashes right in his face, covering the world in spots for a moment, and Tooru flinches when a party popper erupts right next to his ear. Confetti flies into his hair and at least several noise makers go off at once in a nasally chorus. He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, dazed and disoriented, then blinks into the suddenly boisterous room.

Hanamaki _very_ slowly unfurls the noise maker in his mouth, so that it makes a sound like a dying balloon. Around it, he’s smiling. “Look who finally decided to show up.”

Tooru stares at him, then slowly shifts his gaze to look over him. And Iwaizumi is standing there, looking so fiercely proud when he locks gazes with his old partner it’s as if he intends to scorch the very _earth_ with that heat. He’d been here waiting for his best friend after all.

A huge grin splits across Tooru’s face.

“You guys didn’t have to do all this for _me~”_ he sings, practically glowing under all the attention.

Matsukawa coughs indiscreetly into his hand. “Bullshit.”

He recognizes Yuda’s kind voice when it chimes in, “We wanted to!”

“Our very own Hanger Tooru goes from rumored international exchange student to bonafied international medalist, and we _don’t_ throw a party? Unthinkable, really.” And that’s Hanamaki.

Finally, Iwaizumi’s gritty voice enters the mix. “Why don’t you _ever_ call ahead?” he grunts, and that’s it.

If it’s at all possible, Tooru seems to glow even _brighter._ “But, Iwa-chan, you figured out I’d be here anyway, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I had to call your sister and ask her to call me if you called her and told her you’d be coming. Shittykawa. You just love making people work, don’t you?” He shakes his head, then has to turn away to hide the twitch of a smile when he can suppress it no longer.

Tooru’s own smile grows tenfold in response.

He kind of loves his friends.

The boys quickly usher him into the middle of the room to begin the celebrations. There’s a cake, with colorful sprinkles and his face in the middle; they sit around it, chattering extensively about that last, incredible match and every victory that had come before it. There’s also a garland of flowers to wear around his neck, courtesy of Shido’s family’s flower shop, which might have been too extravagant for anyone else but not their very own guest of honor—he’s positively _delighted_. As the night begins to dwindle, they put on recordings of his Olympic interviews and find things to heckle him about, rewinding them over and over and laughing harder the more he slumps into the sofa cushion.

“You guys are the _worst,”_ he huffs, attempting to smack the back of Hanamaki’s head with a pillow. “I’m a natural behind the camera—everyone said so. _Beautiful_. Majestic. You wish you looked half as good.”

Hanamaki points to the TV. “You’ve got sweat going into your mouth.”

 _“That’s_ —I had just won an Olympic medal!”

“Why are you sweating like you just won gold when you only got bronze?”

A round of laughter echoes in the apartment, and Tooru puts a pillow over his face to hide his bright cheeks. Behind the cover, they hear him squawk, “Rude! I brought it with me so you guys can hold it and everything. But you can just _forget it_ now.”

There’s another peal of laughter that quickly gets shushed by a single person.

Hanamaki rolls his eyes. “Oh, pull it out, then, you giant toddler. Show us your shiny new toy.”

“We really want to see it,” Yuda adds, using a much gentler approach.

The others call out similar affirmations with his coaxing, and Tooru slowly but surely peers out from behind the cushion, though with considerable caution. Iwaizumi takes hold of the opportunity to physically wrestle the pillow away from his face and vault him off the couch, sending him padding down the hall with one push to where he’d abandoned his suitcase.

He catches his balance just a split second before disaster, then complains, _“Iwa-chan!”_

“I want to see it,” Iwaizumi says, simply. “You’ll show it to me, right?”

He looks stunned for just a beat at that, before the expression quickly morphs into one of pleasant surprise. Voice melting like warm, saccharine glaze, he wipes bangs from his face and practically carols, _“Well,_ you only had to _ask,_ Iwa-chan~ I’ll be _happy_ to fulfill your heart’s desire if you’re _that_ excited about it. Wait right there!”

He hurries for his suitcase, and Hanamaki can be heard muttering after him. “Good to know the rest of us don’t fucking matter in his world. I got his dumb face printed on a _cake_ and I’m still only second fiddle to Iwa-chan.”

Tooru digs into his luggage, weeding through clothes and souvenirs until he comes upon the secret pocket in which he had hidden his pride and joy. It’s wrapped carefully inside a clean handkerchief, which he delicately unfolds on his way back into the common area. Something metallic catches the dingy apartment light from within and glints back at him.

Before he can make his grand return, however, he’s sidelined by Iwaizumi’s shoulder when he comes hurriedly from the opposite direction.

Tooru fumbles and almost drops the handkerchief, catching it just in time. Iwaizumi nearly does the same with his phone, which he has in his clutch with his hand cupped over the speaker.

 _“Oof._ S-Sorry.” He looks weirdly tense and red in the face, when their eyes meet, and nods once before scurrying towards his bedroom.

Tooru returns to the living room feeling disappointed even if the others greet him eagerly and make a grab for his handkerchief. The act of unveiling his greatest life achievement doesn’t have _nearly_ as much of an attraction without Iwaizumi here to praise him also, and he keeps checking over his shoulder, hoping he would rush back out after a quick phone call to join them again. Shouldn’t his best friend be here in this moment to rub his fingers into his hair and congratulate him?

“Where did Iwa-chan go?” he asks, his voice lilting dangerously close to a whine. He flops down onto the couch, not even enjoying the mirrored faces of awe looking back at him as the boys take turns passing around his medal.

“Oh, his wife called,” Hanamaki says, dismissively.

Tooru almost chokes at the word. “His _what?”_

“You know,” Matsukawa explains, “that girl he’s seeing who works down at the elementary school.”

“...Oh,” is all he says aloud, even though he feels his stomach clench in a nauseating wave. It takes several moments to rearrange his face into something more neutral, and then he manages to paste on a big, plastic smile and lecture them, with a tinkling laugh, “She wouldn’t be his wife, then, would she?”

“Close enough,” Hanamaki counters. He’s smirking now. “I mean, they’re getting to be that age. You don’t enter into relationships this late in the game without marriage in mind.”

“Iwa-chan doesn’t want to get married,” he insists.

His two friends shrug. “Who knows? Maybe this one will change his mind,” says Hanamaki, and Matsukawa adds, “She definitely _acts_ enough like his wife.”

 _“Don’t_ —don’t call her that,” Tooru protests. He’s exceptionally annoyed, and his smile feels tight and uncomfortable despite his struggle to keep it even.

“Why do _you_ care so much?”

“Probably afraid Iwaizumi won’t be available to mooch off of anymore.”

Hanamaki tuts in a playful manner. “There’s a limit to how much you can hang off a person, you know. What, are you going to pack yourself into their bag and follow them on their honeymoon?”

Matsukawa nudges him. “He can live in a tent in their back garden.”

He nudges back. “Photoshop his face into the Iwaizumi family photo.”

Heads bent together, they break out into laughter.

Tooru glares at his knees. He’s not smiling anymore, he doesn’t think, but his face feels too numb for him to be sure what sort of expression he’s wearing at all; he doesn’t think it’s anything kind or becoming. His stomach feels hot and unsettled like it’s facing a losing battle, the more he pictures this future they’ve created—a future in which Iwaizumi is settled with some faceless girl and doesn’t have room for Tooru in his life anymore. He’s not even sure which part of the fantasy hurts more.

“Stop it,” he mumbles, in a quiet voice. “You can call her his girlfriend. But you can’t call her his wife.”

Hanamaki stops chortling long enough to look up at him. “Hell, Oikawa, we’re just kidd…”

He trails off. Tooru notices from his peripheral when he nudges Matsukawa again, this time with some urgency, and then they’re both staring at him in unison.

“Oikawa,” Matsukawa begins, slowly. “Are you...?”

“It couldn’t be that you…?”

His palms suddenly feel sweaty and he rubs them down his knees; he knows what they must be thinking right now and he knows that he won’t deny it if they ask him outright. But this lack of control, not knowing what will happen after everything is revealed—he hates it the most. Nerves roll down his spine like something sticky and unpleasant taking root under his skin. He waits.

Then footsteps come padding down the hall, distracting the room, and Iwaizumi appears round the corner a moment later. His phone is out of sight and he looks apologetic.

“S-Sorry. That went on much longer than I thought.”

Tooru’s face immediately splits into a giant grin, as a surge of relief washes over him. He quickly waves him closer. “Don’t worry about it, Iwa-chan! Now, come sit next to me so I can show you my medal.”

The medal passes several hands before landing in Tooru’s clutches, who instantly hands it off to his best friend once he takes the offered seat. Iwaizumi barely glances at it. He stares instead at Tooru with thinned lips, some sort of indiscernible emotion flickering through his eyes as he absorbs his face and his brilliant smile.

Eventually, he grunts, “Everything all right?”

Tooru laughs. “Of course, Iwa-chan. Do you think something would be wrong after I just brought home an Olympic medal? Which you are _really_ not reacting appropriately to, you know. I mean, it’s in _your hands_ if you hadn’t noticed.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t seem convinced, but reluctantly allows his attention to be shifted elsewhere. Their friends watch this exchange with considerable focus, but nothing happens which is not already typical for their old captain and vice. Not even Iwaizumi carding his fingers through Tooru’s hair and telling him, in a gentle voice, “Hey, I’m really proud of you,” is anything out of the realm of ordinary.

Tooru pulls out his chest. “Of course, we’ll be taking the gold next time.”

A couple voices cat-call back at him. “Of course!”

Hanamaki and Matsukawa simply stare at him with some concern, but say nothing.

Most of the boys have work early in the morning and soon have to call an end to the night, no matter how late they want to stay. They line up one by one to offer their final congratulations to their esteemed guest of honor, who preens under all the compliments and promises to keep in touch, then slowly begin to file out. Iwaizumi disappears into the kitchen to pack away the leftover cake, and Tooru is all set to begin cleaning up the apartment until he realizes there are two people still sitting on the couch, clearly waiting on him to be alone.

Left with no other options and no means of escape, he takes in a steadying breath, then begins, “I—”

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?” Hanamaki speaks over him.

Matsukawa nods. “So much sense that I’m actually sort of mad about it.”

“If my bro helped me file my nails every morning before practice, I’d probably fall in love with him, too.”

“Not to mention all those pats on the butt? I mean, those couldn’t _all_ have been totally platonic.”

“Dude.”

Tooru harrumphs, hearing what they have to say, and hopes profusely that no part of his face had turned too visibly red. “Are you two really going to be like this even in this situation?”

Hanamaki raises a brow, as if he was confused by the question. “What situation? I don’t see a situation. Issei, do you?”

Matsukawa glances left, then right, then shrugs. “No situation here.”

Iwaizumi appears from behind the setter before he can retort, looking between them all curiously. “What’s going on?” he asks. “What are you guys talking about?”

“We’re talking about how there’s absolutely _nothing_ going on.”

Confused, he turns towards Tooru for a more fulfilling explanation, who shrugs and, embarrassingly enough, can feel heat on his cheeks. “They’re not wrong...”

“Also, we’re spending the night. We just decided.”

“You can just leave the cleanup until morning. We thrive in the filth.”

“Like cockroaches,” Iwaizumi notes.

They make identical noises of protests just as Tooru bursts into laughter. He quickly claps a hand over his mouth to stifle the sound, but a few peeps still escape past his overlapping fingers and Iwaizumi grins at him conspiringly over the reaction. It’s a ridiculously handsome smile, especially under the apartment’s low light. He scrambles to cover the ensuing flush, knowing that their audience is observing them closely.

In bed that night, Tooru thinks that there are worse things. Worse than enduring a few light-hearted jokes at his expense from his two closest friends. Worse than standing next to his crush in their shared apartment, feeling that magnetic pull of attraction and struggling to hold himself back from acting on the thrum of longing.

Matsukawa and Hanamaki can pretend to swoon behind Iwaizumi at breakfast all they would like. They can arrange their plates in the shape of a heart, or sit in each other’s laps, or act out an embarrassing kabedon scenario in front of the fridge. Tooru feels like he’s been transported back to his middle school days, being heckled over crushes and fighting against his bright cheeks. He feels innocent like a little boy discovering love for the first time.

But there are, he thinks, definitely worse things.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

“What do you think are the odds I can throw this paper airplane from over here, and it’ll land in that vase in the hallway?”

Takeru looks up from his summer homework with some interest, letting his pencil flop over his workbook. Using his thumbs and pointer fingers, he holds up both hands in a rectangular shape to look first at the mentioned vase from across the room, and then at his uncle seated beside him. He grins.

“Less than aliens being real, probably.”

Tooru turns up his nose, twirling the paper plane in his hand as he looks down at his nephew with disapproval. “Who raised you to be such a brat?”

He smirks. “I learned from watching the best, of course.”

 _“Well._ I can’t argue that I’m certainly the _best_ at everything I do.”

With that, he flicks his wrist and lets fly his paper creation, watching it cut across the room with an impressive speed. It follows a promising trajectory for the few first seconds of launch, but then disaster strikes; it wobbles suddenly and veers off its path, heading into what looks like a steep, downward fall.

This is when Tooru’s sister unexpectedly steps into the room, and her forehead gets stabbed with the pointed tip of a plane. _“Ouch!”_

Tooru hurriedly picks up his failed designs and shoves them all into his nephew’s lap. “Takeru did it!”

“I did not!” Takeru picks up his discarded pencil and leans over his workbook, quickly scribbling some nonsense under the first, untouched question. “I’ve been doing my schoolwork! It was all Tooru!”

His mother casts a shrewd look about the room, a red mark starting to form on her forehead. “Takeru,” she says, dryly, “stop being such a bad influence on your uncle. And, Tooru, stop being a snivelling child, would you? You’re almost thirty, for god’s sake.”

“Eternal youth,” he counters, with his most charming smile. It earns him another crude look, which he ignores. “And, anyway, you should worry less about counting my birthday candles and more about what they’re teaching your son at school. The boy doesn’t even believe our _infinite_ universe could be home to extraterrestrial lifeforms!”

“How can he not when there’s one sitting right next to him?”

Takeru cackles loudly into the room at his uncle’s expense, all pretense about doing schoolwork forgotten. Tooru glares at his sister, who playfully blows him a kiss before disappearing again down the hall and towards the kitchen. He follows, though not before giving Takeru’s head a sharp slap with a paper fan and ignoring his outraged howl in response.

“Traitor,” he hisses, once he’s in the kitchen. “Takeru has no respect for me because of you.”

She smiles sweetly. “Trust me, Tooru, that one’s all you.”

He grumbles incoherently while looking over her shoulder; he’d forgotten where he’d picked up his most obnoxious quirks as a child, but it’s now all coming back to him. Rather than partake in a losing battle of wits, he fishes his phone from his pocket and snaps a photo of the meal his sister was in the midst of preparing for tonight: his last meal with his family before he supposedly must return to Tokyo.

She watches him with interest. “Who’s that for?”

“Iwa-chan,” he replies, absentmindedly. He’s too busy trying to choose the perfect emoji with which to caption the photo. “Poor guy is probably finishing up the last of his leftover takeout food tonight. So I thought I’d rub your cooking in his face. Ha!”

She shakes her head, though she’s smiling. “Hajime-kun is such an angel. Though he must have fallen from heaven, to have gotten stuck with you.”

For once he has the perfect comeback ready—“I think you mean, fallen _into_ heaven”—when they’re interrupted by a commotion that is their parents walking into the house, laden with groceries. Tooru presses his lips together and quickly stuffs away his phone, then throws his sister a meaningful look before rushing out to take the bags off his parents’ hands. She knows better by now than to pick the conversation back up again.

It’s his last night visiting his childhood home, so his sister and Takeru had come specially to enjoy a big meal with the entire family. He sets the table, his sister finishes the last of her duties in the kitchen, Takeru finally stops pretending he’s making any sort of progress on his homework, and they all come together.

It’s pleasant, as far as family meals go. They talk, they laugh. Tooru cleans his plate and promises his father he’s been eating right all alone in his apartment. His mother only badgers him once, about his single status and the lack of blind dates he’s been on this week.

“Harada-san’s youngest is around your age. If you’d only let me…” she begins.

 _“No,_ mom,” he retorts, taking a firm stance.

Once upon a time he was more gallant with his refusals, but he’s become tired of the same old arguments. And it hasn’t escaped his notice that his parents have yet to give him the time he had asked for, for the conversation he’s prepared for this trip. His mother’s been to the market three times in this week alone and his father seems to live at his job more than he does at home; Tooru gets the distinct feeling he’s being avoided. He’s just got no patience for any of this any longer.

With a quick look towards Takeru, who’s watching their exchange closely, his mother is forced to let the topic go.

He washes dishes with his sister afterwards, the mood light and the silence amicable. He gives her cooking an abysmal review and she dumps soapy, curry-scented water into his hair, and they almost break a dish if not for his athletic reflexes. It’s a peaceful moment, and more than once, he thinks of doing this back in Iwaizumi’s apartment—just the two of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder in his tiny kitchenette, making a greater mess than what they had started with but having too good a time to care.

His throat squeezes. He misses it. There is only one more night to bear before he can return to that apartment, to Iwa-chan, but he misses it _so much_ it’s like hot coal burning up inside his stomach.

“You okay, Tooru?” his sister asks, looking up at him in worry when he doesn’t speak for a beat too long.

He quickly gets a grip on his bearings, then replies, “Just some indigestion from that god-awful dinner, probably.”

She bends her knee and delivers a strong jab to his rear.

Despite all of their banter, he’s reluctant to let her leave at the end of the night. Takeru packs up his book bag and stuffs all of Tooru’s failed paper airplanes into the outer pocket, hoping to sell them off for a small fortune, and then they depart. Tooru follows them to the front door, lingering there with his sister as Takeru waits on the sidewalk for their murmured conversation to end.

“You’ll still be around, won’t you?” she asks. “At Hajime-kun’s apartment?”

Tooru checks over his shoulder first before admitting, “For a little while.”

“I guess you’re just never going to tell me, are you? Why I’m not allowed to bring up Hajime-kun around the house, I mean.”

“Mm.” He looks up at the sky; it’s a cloudless night, though still without stars, and a memory seems to reflect back at him on the blank canvas. He tells her, “Whatever you’re imagining is probably right.”

“I see.” She stares at him with some concern. “Are you—?”

“You still haven’t left yet?” Their mother appears suddenly in the doorway behind Tooru, making no sound with her slipper-clad feet. She looks past the two of them into the outdoors, at the dark sky. “You’ll miss even the last bus at this rate.”

“We were just leaving,” his sister assures her. With one last meaningful look at her brother, she catches up with Takeru at the end of the house and falls into step with him, heading in the direction of the neighborhood bus stop. It’s difficult watching her go, even if Tooru knows that she must.

Both mother and son watch them quietly, just until their chatter can no longer be heard. Tooru looks down when he feels a hand rest on his elbow.

“Come inside and close that door, won’t you, Tooru?” his mother instructs. “Before the mosquitos start flying in.”

He does as he’s told, slowly, while watching her rearrange the shoes on their rack and put away the slippers Takeru had left a mess by the door. She’s humming softly as she does this, smiling to herself, probably happy to have had the family together under one roof for the night. Tooru feels irrationally angry all of a sudden, watching her. He thinks of the memory he had seen while looking up at the night sky, and he thinks of how Iwa-chan is _family_ also and would have been here if they weren’t constantly having to put up a ridiculous act. There is no more patience for any of this left inside him.

“I need to talk to you,” he blurts out. He has to forcibly unhinge his jaw to even speak in the first place. “Give me some time.”

Her hand stills over a pair of shoes, and then her eyes flicker to him, taking in his hardened posture and the determination gleaming in his eyes. He feels big and imposing, taking up all the space in the tiny entryway. He hopes he looks it, too.

When she straightens, she’s nervously rubbing her fingers together in her nervous habit. “Right now?”

He nods once, stiffly.

It doesn’t escape his notice when her gaze slides away from his and instead looks at a spot over his shoulder, even though there’s nothing there. “Mm… not right now, Tooru. I’m really tired.”

_“Mom.”_

“It’s been a long day, Tooru,” she sighs, backing up once. “There’s always tomorrow, isn’t there? You’re here for one more night, aren’t you?” She smiles encouragingly. “We’ll make a nice cup of tea in the morning like we usually do and have a long chat out in the back. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not young anymore. I can get tired.”

“It won’t take long,” he pleads.

When he takes a step forward, she takes another one back.

“Finish up your packing before bed, but get some rest, too, all right?” she instructs, her smile a bit tighter now. “I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll, um, talk.”

Their gazes lock for a moment before she quickly looks away again, and then she turns and retreats back into the house, leaving him standing uselessly in the entryway. He doesn’t immediately move away, but stares instead at the spot where she had just stood, feeling the frustration cascading down his back. Their talk in the morning would never come to be real; he knows his mother too well to expect otherwise. She’ll deny and she’ll deny, until her fiction turns into reality. He knows this, and yet, he had still hoped that for once his persistence and his sincerity could finally be enough to win her over.

When he eventually comes to his senses and moves away from the door, his father is waiting for him at the bottom of the steps. He almost feels a sense of impending dread seeing him there, as if he were about to hear something he should close his ears to.

But his father simply holds out his phone. “You left it in the kitchen. I saved it from getting dripped on.”

“Oh.” He accepts it, feeling a bit numb. His muscles still refuse to uncoil for some reason. “Thank you.”

“It looks like you have a message.” He holds up both hands. “I didn’t mean to look, it was just there on the screen. I think it’s from Hajime. I didn’t know you two still kept in touch?”

 _Ahh, there it is._ He presses on the power button and stares at the IWA-CHAN flashing back at him, and his shoulders tighten to a point where it’s almost painful. He replies, weakly, “Yeah, we… sometimes…”

His father looks at him disapprovingly from over the rim of his glasses. “I have nothing against that, of course, but don’t you think it’s about time you stopped using that childish nickname? Hajime is a grown man now, and so are you, Tooru.” He waits a beat, then releases a gruff sigh. “And it worries your mother.”

Tooru glares down at his phone, squeezing it so hard it leaves red pelts on the sides of his palm. A flash of anger strikes him iron-hot.

He seethes, “You two don’t know _anything.”_

But his father, already gone, doesn’t hear a word.

He doesn’t bother closing his door once he’s alone in his bedroom. His duffel bag is spilling clothes in a corner of the room, and he’s got his skincare all laid out neat and pretty on his old dresser. It doesn’t stay this way for very long. He stuffs clothes into his bag without even really seeing what’s passing through his hands, then drags an arm across his dresser so all his products clatter off the edge and fall in as a single heap. Soon it’s bursting and dented in awkward places, but he simply zips it shut with force and hitches it over his shoulder.

Outside his window, he takes one last look at Iwaizumi’s childhood home. The moonlight cutting across the rooftop is stark, but if he stares long enough, he can almost imagine that it’s an early morning before school and Iwa-chan has walked out the front door, dressed sloppily in his old Aoba Johsai uniform. It’s a sight so old and familiar, it might just be the moment that defines all of Tooru’s childhood; there’s never been a time in his life when he’s looked down the way and Iwa-chan was not there.

His resolve hardened, he shuts his curtains before sweeping out of the room. It’s not his plan to make detours or stops—he’s started down a narrow path, sure of his decision—except his mother catches him gliding past the kitchen in the dark house.

“Tooru?” she whispers. There’s a water jug in her hand, which she quickly sets down in favor of following after him. “Are you going somewhere?”

He doesn’t stop. “I’m leaving.”

“Tonight?” She sounds panicked. “Weren’t you going to be here until the morning?”

“Change of plans.”

He slips on his loafers with a stoic expression, then taps the heels against the floor to beat them into place. His shoes adorned and his bag strapped to his shoulder, he turns to face her. She looks small even though she’s standing one step above him on the landing, and he notes the hint of fear shadowed across her face. But none of it changes his resolve.

“I’m going to Iwa-chan’s apartment,” he tells her, point blank.

Her face crumples, hearing this. “H-Hajime-kun? You two still…? I mean, c-can’t that wait until tomorrow, Tooru? It’s late, I’m sure the buses aren’t running, and it’s rude to show up unannounced at this hour. Here, come inside, and we can talk—”

“No,” he speaks over her, firmly. “No, it can’t wait. I miss him too much.”

She pales. “T-Tooru…?”

“And it’s not my first time showing up unannounced at his place, mom. I go there all the time. I have a room there.”

This seems to be her biggest fear realized, but he is hardly moved by her pale, shaking lips. Maybe once he might have been, but that time has passed.

“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “Iwa-chan and I don’t have that kind of relationship. But I want us to. That’s what I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

“I… _That_ kind of relationship?” She visibly grapples for something to say, looking like she wants to be anywhere but here, having this conversation with her only son.

Tooru looks at her sadly. He knows this isn’t the path his parents had chosen for him. He’s given them his stardom and his endless achievements in the volleyball world, but he can’t give his mother a cute daughter-in-law to gossip with. He can’t give them a marriage. He can’t give them so many of the things they’ve always wished for him.

Once upon a time, this had caused him to ache. But he doesn’t care anymore about their fantastical future and their worried looks; he’s just too tired, of making everyone else happy but never himself.

“Mom,” he says. _I’m sorry, but,_ “I love Iwa-chan.”

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

The winter when he is fifteen and a half, only just a first-year at Aoba Johsai still teeming with his win as Best Setter and yearning to prove himself to his new team, Oikawa Tooru injures his knee.

It’s not a fracture, nor is it anything else too serious, and the doctor calls him lucky and overworked and uses a slew of medical terms that are altogether much too frightening for a boy who dreams of becoming a professional athlete. But Oikawa Tooru will play again. That’s the only thing that matters in the moment.

He is returned home in the middle of the night, his injured leg wrapped in a brace and his normally radiant face turned pale from the day’s events. He hobbles ungracefully with a crutch tucked under one arm, unable to climb the steps to his room and forced to relocate into the spare bedroom on the first floor, where the mattress is hard and the walls are bare and he has no distraction from the spiraling nightmares of never playing volleyball again. It’s fitful and exhausting, but sleep eventually comes to him.

He wakes later in the night to an ache in his knee, a weight on his chest, and something pressed into his hand.

His eyes reluctantly pry apart. Through his blurry vision, he can make out that it’s still dark outside, but the pale, orange light in the room is from the bedside lamp someone had switched on. He squints down at his chest, slowly coming to realize that the weight pressing upon it is Iwaizumi’s cheek.

Still caught halfway between the unconscious and reality, he mumbles, “Mm, Iwa-chan?”

Iwaizumi’s eyes immediately snap open at the call, and he bolts upright. “Oikawa?” he demands, somehow sounding both groggy and alert at the same time. Leaning over him, he asks, “Are you awake? Are you thirsty? Do you want water?”

“‘m all right,” he slurs. It takes another second for his head to stop throbbing, and then he asks, “How’d ya know?”

His gaze turns into steel. “Your mom told me. I heard you coming home through my window. I messaged your phone and she answered.”

“Ah.” There’s no will in him to reply with more than a single syllable. His knee keeps aching and his head feels muggy from the pain medication. And he feels almost sick just seeing the look on his best friend’s face, seeing the concern there, the _fear._ He’d never wanted Iwaizumi to look like this.

“What happened?” Iwaizumi asks, in a quiet voice that doesn’t suit him.

 _“Mmm._ Landed wrong.” He squeezes his eyes shut, concentrating on the memory playing out in his head even if the most prominent sensation he can remember is the immense pain erupting down his leg. His head swims from the effort, but he’s pondering the best way to tell the tale that results in Iwaizumi feeling the least amount of worry. “Luckily Coach Mizoguchi was at school late.”

Iwaizumi stews on this silently for a bit, and Tooru waits. Finally, he says exactly what Tooru had hoped he wouldn’t hear.

“I should have been there.”

He opens his eyes again, first seeing nothing but shadows swirling on the ceiling, but then rolling his gaze until it lands on Iwaizumi’s face. He looks crumpled and ashamed, even more so than before, so fragile it’s as if he were made of glass. Vaguely, Tooru wonders which of them is more hurt by this injury.

“Iwa-chan—” he begins, attempting to sit up.

Iwaizumi instantly eases him back down with a hand on his shoulder, coaxing him, in a gentle voice, “Don’t get up. I’m listening.”

He gently strokes a thumb along Tooru’s shoulder blade, soothing him back into the mattress, before skimming it across his hairline. His eyes are the brightest thing in the room as they take in his best friend’s face, scrutinizing him for any visible signs of pain. It’s as if nothing else in the world matters.

A rush of embarrassment that he cannot explain courses through Tooru. For the first time, he becomes aware of the sweat caked under his bangs. He’d been embroiled in a steady workout at the time of the accident, and he hasn’t been able to shower since. His hair is probably greasy, his body stained with grime and sweat. It’s a ridiculous notion—he and Iwa-chan have already spent more than half their lives together inside of a gym, seeing each other at their absolute worst—and yet he can’t help but wonder what Iwaizumi is seeing right now. He doesn’t want to appear as anything less than perfect when being looked at with such delicate eyes. Iwa-chan’s eyes.

He turns his head away. “It’s not your fault this happened to me,” he says to the wall. “It’s my own fault.”

“Oikawa...”

“You’re always telling me to rest more.” His voice shakes a little, admitting it. “You’re always saying, ‘There’s a difference between skipping and resting.’ And I just didn’t— _couldn’t_ stand taking one day off every week, like we were just sitting around wasting time. The doctor said my tendons were overworked.”

“But you know what?” It takes considerable effort, but he manages an encouraging smile to direct his way. Their eyes lock. “The doctor also said I’ll be fine if I keep up with my physical therapy. And if I wear a knee brace, there’s very minimal chance of this happening again. So I’m really going to be fine! I’ll make myself all better, I won’t let this stop me, I promise, and I—”

_“Oikawa.”_

Iwaizumi’s voice is grave and frighteningly still when it speaks over him. He stares at Tooru’s knee with an expression that is shadowed and almost made ominous by the damp lamplight.

Tooru stutters into silence. A part of him fears that Iwaizumi’s stoic speech is caused by an unyielding anger, that he’s passed the point of insults and noisy arguments. He bites his lip and waits, almost hoping for a lecture.

What he’s not prepared for is a quiet and shaky breath. All tension releases from Iwaizumi’s shoulders and he is deflated whole, looking almost like he’s shriveled _._

He audibly swallows several times before he is able to speak. “I don’t care about all that, Oikawa. I just— _can’t_ stop picturing it. You. All alone in that gym. And you, you fall, and you hurt yourself. And, _god,_ you’re so scared a-and you’re calling out for help. But there’s no one there. _”_

When they stare into each other, he looks so wrecked with guilt that Tooru feels completely wretched inside. He’d never wanted Iwa-chan to look like this. He’d never wanted to be the reason Iwa-chan ever looked like this.

And he doesn’t want his heart to be beating wildly in this moment, like a complete betrayal to Iwa-chan’s pain, but it simply won’t slow.

Iwaizumi breathes, “I should have _been_ there.”

Tooru feels like crying. It’s not his knee that’s hurting anymore, it’s something else. It’s this unbearable pain in his chest that’s afraid of the emotion surging through him, responding to Iwaizumi’s tenderness. It’s this fear that this moment feels like a turning point of some sort, one he’s not ready to face or sure he ever _wants_ to face. His heart is beating wildly for his best friend and it’s just like falling all alone in a cold gymnasium, calling out for help, fearing that life from this moment on would never go as he had planned.

His eyes flicker to his hand, seeking out the weight that’s been pressed into it all night.

It’s Iwaizumi’s hand, clutching his own.

And he feels himself hit the ground all over again.

The winter when he is fifteen and a half, Oikawa Tooru learns what it means to have a love that is doomed from the very start.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

He catches the last bus of the night, though just barely, and it drops him off just three stops down from where he had started. It’s a late hour, emphasized even more by the quiet neighborhood. He starts down the familiar path, walking it like he’s done a hundred times before.

There’s light beaming out from under the apartment door but his steps are still light when he lets himself in. He feels only a little bit sorry, catching Iwaizumi completely unawares with his sudden arrival; he’s blankly flipping channels on his TV when he looks up and suddenly Tooru is there, and his eyes double in size.

“Oikawa?” He starts. “The _hell_ are you doing here?”

Tooru sniffs, dumping his bag where he stands. “What a nice reception.”

“I—Sorry.” He hastily switches off the TV when the noise becomes too distracting, then looks at him closely. “I thought you’d be at your parents’ place until at least tomorrow?”

“Change of plans.” He shucks off his shoes, but ignores his slippers altogether and simply comes to slump beside Iwaizumi. He smiles, though it’s a bit brittle. “I knew you’d be missing me too much to stand one more night apart.”

Iwaizumi stares at him, not even slightly affected by the tease. “What’s wrong?” he asks. “Did something happen?”

Tooru doesn’t respond. He looks out instead at the barren apartment, at his pictures and articles hanging on the wall, the pillow covers on the couch cushions that he had given Iwa-chan last Christmas, and the barrage of shoes lining the front rack that nearly all belong to him. Pieces of him are everywhere. The shower caddy is full of hair products he always generously hands down to Iwaizumi, who still insists on washing out his hair with his favorite soap like the barbarian he is. If he opens the far left kitchen cabinet, he knows he’ll find the souvenir mug he had bought when they’d gone to watch the World Cup seven years ago. And there’s a room in this apartment that belongs solely to him, even if it’s empty more days than it’s actually being used.

This shabby, rundown apartment has felt more like a home to him in these recent years than any place before it.

Tooru’s entire childhood was spent living on the same street on which he was born, just across the road from his best friend. But he could leave all of that behind, he thinks, if that’s what it takes to remain here. He might just have to.

“You’re being quiet,” Iwaizumi notes, now looking concerned.

He finally speaks. “Mm. I was just thinking. Let’s go to Tokyo.”

It takes a moment for the sudden statement to register, and then Iwaizumi frowns. “...Tokyo?”

“Yeah.” A sparkle enters his eyes. “Just a little day trip, you and me. Let’s go tomorrow! We’ll have to leave kind of early if we want to get back the same day. Hmm. But we won’t have to pack anything, so I don’t think it’ll be a lot of trouble. We can get lunch there, too! And if we—”

 _“Whoa._ Okay, _stop.”_ Iwaizumi looks at him weirdly. “I can’t just run off to Tokyo in the middle of the week, dumbass. I’ve got to go into the shop tomorrow.”

Tooru stares him down with a shrewd look. “Weren’t you the one bragging about how monk-cut is _such_ a good worker? Can’t you just leave it to him for a day? I’m sure he and Kyouken-chan can run things for an afternoon without the whole place collapsing. I thought they were your amazing and reliable _team.”_

“Ugh. You’re a giant, spoiled toddler. I hope you know that.” Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. But he’s already reached for his phone and seems to be typing out an update for Kyoutani and Tanaka about his absence for tomorrow. He’s always going to indulge his best friend and they both know it.

“What’s this all about, anyway?” he asks, after. His phone’s been put aside and Tooru looks exceptionally pleased. “Did something really happen?”

Tooru briefly remembers the look on his mother’s face in that dim entryway, and turning his back to it. “Nothing, really. I just wanted to get away for a bit, from…” He shrugs. “Well. Just away.”

“You’re not running from loan sharks, are you?”

 _“God,_ Iwa-chan, _no._ You’re so dramatic.”

He snorts. “Look who’s talking.”

They turn in early for the night soon after this, and rise the next morning even before the sun, catching one of the earliest trains out of the city. Tooru chatters incessantly despite the purple bruises under his eyes, determined to have a good time on their outing. Iwaizumi looks halfway unconscious as he listens with a stony expression, but doesn’t tell him to stop.

They move with the surging crowd out of the station and into the bustling square, where they start their morning on a quiet, sobering note, sipping coffee at a corner cafe and watching people clear the busy crosswalk like something was lapping at their heels. Tooru takes them down Takeshita for warm, sugary crepes that are so fluffy that they melt on their tongues, though Iwaizumi barely finishes half of his own before the copious amount of sugar becomes too much and he surrenders the rest to Tooru. They walk the narrow alley, taking in the brightly lit vendors, costumes, and people, which are all so unlike anything they would see back in Sendai.

When the sun reaches mid-sky and it gets too hot to be wandering the streets, they take the metro over to Shinjuku and spend the first part of the afternoon in a jazzy restaurant on the first floor of a shopping arcade, then later, perusing the quiet gallery on the second floor. Iwaizumi doesn’t quite understand the concept behind the art, Tooru calls him a barbarian, and they garner a rude look from a security guard for their ensuing argument. When they step out in the early evening and Iwaizumi first makes eye-contact with the scaly beast watching over the district from over the Toho building, it becomes a given that they spend at least an hour taking pictures to his heart’s content.

“A Godzilla and a gorilla,” Tooru sneers. “A match made in heaven.”

“Just shut up and take the picture,” Iwaizumi instructs, holding up his peace sign a little higher.

Tooru obliges with a roll of his eyes, but can’t help his small smile. Iwaizumi looks flushed and happy and like he’s glad he came here. It’s been a while now since they were last able to take a mini adventure like this, but after today, Tooru hopes they’ll always have all their future adventures together.

Following dusk, they climb up to the top of the government building for a view of the Tokyo skyline. Night has fallen, and the district is lit with pinpricks of light, some a flashing neon color and others a soft orange glow. The splendor of it all washes out the stars, but it’s beautiful in its own way.

Iwaizumi barely takes in the beauty. “It’s getting pretty late,” he worries.

“Relax, Iwa-chan!” Tooru laughs, clearly unconcerned. “If it gets too late, we can just stay at my place for the night and head back in the morning.”

Iwaizumi gives him a crude look. “That was your plan all along, wasn’t it? You slimy bastard.”

“Well, what can I do?” He pretends to sigh as if he’s the most depraved person alive. “You never come to visit me, your very own best friend. So I have to resort to these slimy tricks.”

“When would I even get the chance to visit you when you’re at my place every other weekend, stupid?”

“Are you telling me to come home less?” An oily smile slithers over his face and he leans in too close, moving his mouth purposely slow when he churrs, “I couldn’t do that, _I-wa-chan._ You’d miss me too much.”

Iwaizumi turns red despite obvious efforts not to do so, and shoves him. “You’re too close, dumbass,” he seethes, without actual bite. “People are looking at us.”

 _Does it look like I care, Iwa-chan?_ he wants to say, but bites his tongue.

“Of course they should look,” he says aloud, pulling back. “It’s not everyday their eyes are treated to such a magnificent view. And I’m not talking about the skyline.”

Boasts like these are usually met with a look of disgust, but this time, Iwaizumi narrows his eyes. “What’s _with_ you?” he demands. “You’ve been acting way over the top since last night, even more than usual for you. What are you hiding that you had to bring me all the way to another city to say?”

Tooru purses his lips, staring down at the landscape spread out underneath them. The city looks clogged and busy, mimicking the state of his mind, but watching the bustling crowds reminds him that he’d come here having made a decision. It’s been a long time since he’s felt this certain about anything in his life.

He admits, “I ran away from home.”

Iwaizumi looks surprised, though it’s replaced quickly with confusion. “What does that mean? You’re a grown ass adult, as hard as it is to believe sometimes.”

Amusement flickers through Tooru, despite his nerves. “I had the whole experience, Iwa-chan. Very juvenile-delinquent-esque. I packed my bags in the middle of the night, I tried to sneak out of the house, my mom caught me, we had words, I stormed out telling her not to come for me. It was thrilling, really.”

“I just wanted to try it, I think,” he adds, lightly, “since I never got to have the experience growing up. Even you snuck out once, remember, Iwa-chan? In grade school, your dad wanted you to do wrestling but you wanted to be in volleyball with me, so you ran away to my house and I hid you in my closet. Remember?” The city lights reflect neon-bright in his eyes when he says, regretfully, “But I never ran away, never tried acting out even once. Because I wanted to be a good son.”

 _Always_ a good son, with the grades, the charm, the manners, and now, the stardom. He remembers again the look on his mother’s face in that dim entryway and turning away from it, and how it had all never been enough for her; she would always wanted something more, so much, _normal._ She would always want something Tooru was no longer prepared to give her.

He never looks away from the cityscape, but Iwaizumi’s stare pricks into the side of his face.

“You had a fight with your mom?” he broaches carefully, when Tooru doesn’t say more. “What about?”

Tooru inhales and it feels just like the moments when he’s standing on one end of a court with a volleyball in hand, visualizing the path of his serve seconds before he brings it to fruition. There’s no cheering crowd for him this time.

“I told her,” he confesses, “that I couldn’t bear it even one more second to be away from you.”

Behind them, a couple kisses in front of the pretty view just as a camera flash goes off. A child presses their grimy hands to the clean glass, pulled away moments later by their parents. An elderly woman smiles sadly, reminded by the sea of lights of her memories with her late husband. Tooru wonders when it was decided that he needed to be miserable so these people could be happy.

Iwaizumi stiffens; tension snaps into his body and Tooru feels it emanate across the sliver of distance between them. But it’s not anything he hadn’t been expecting.

“Do you remember when we were eighteen?” he asks, as if he doesn’t feel the growing heat. “We had just lost to Karasuno. We were on our way home. And you said I would probably never be happy because I would spend my life always chasing something.”

Tooru remembers that moment like a stark screenshot through his haze of polaroid memories; it’s defined his life for the past two years, the subject of his many ruminations during lonely evenings.

“Of course, you weren’t wrong. I thought I’d be happy two years ago, when I made captain, when I brought home a title. But I’m probably not going to be happy until I win gold. And even when I win it, I probably won’t be happy until I defend it. And even then, there will always be a step higher and I’m always going to be chasing something. Just like you said.”

“But the thing is, Iwa-chan, the thing is that even if I win every match and every tournament that I ever enter, I don’t think I’ll ever be happy until I no longer have to chase you.”

Here his gaze breaks away for the first time from the view to take in all of his best friend; the cord traveling up his neck; the curve of his fingers balled into his clenched hands; the steel in his eyes. Some twisted part of Tooru has always been most attracted to Iwaizumi when he’s in this state of anger.

Iwaizumi doesn’t look at him. He glares at the fist he’s tightened, white painted across his knuckles, and hisses, “Stop it.”

“Hey, Iwa-chan?” Tooru says anyway. “You know how I feel about you, don’t you?”

 _“Oikawa.”_ His teeth grind together. “Enough.”

Tooru obeys, rolling his lips together. But he continues staring into the side of Iwaizumi’s face, every ounce of his hope displayed clearly in his fervent expression. Sincerity oozes from his very being.

Iwaizumi is unmoved, growing more agitated as his stare continues to hold, until it bursts. “You’re ruining this, Oikawa,” he snaps. His hand darts out to gesture between them. _“Us.”_

 _And this orchestrated act of friendship we’ve been perfecting for years,_ is what he doesn’t say.

But Tooru is tired of acts, least of all because he doesn’t know who they’re even putting on a show for anymore. He used to be so afraid of it all crumbling, terrified by the idea of his feelings seeping into everyday life, getting found out, a crack in the mask. A useless, futile fear.

He breathes in steadily, no longer afraid. “Maybe it’s worth ruining—”

“Cut the bullshit,” Iwaizumi interrupts, and an edge of venom passes over his face. “We’re not eighteen anymore.”

His eyes have turned red around the rims. His fists clench and unclench. And after a few seconds of tense silence drag on between them, he says, “I’m leaving.”

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru pleads. His tongue glides along his bottom lip. “Iwa-chan, _please.”_

“Go find someone else, Oikawa,” he spits, taking a step away to dodge the hand that reaches for him. A sharp inhale seems to cap his rising temper, and then he adds, darkly, “Don’t you dare follow me. I don’t want to see your face. I’m just... _sick_ of your shit.”

He spins on his heel and stalks away, cutting through the throng of happy couples and happy families and happy people. Tooru watches numbly as his figure slinks across the crowd, up until he disappears inside the closing elevator and is sliced away from view. And then he’s alone.

Outside in the night, the Tokyo lights continue to shine on.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

The soft tones of a piano filter through the room and Tooru taps his finger to the music, humming along with the melody. Couples spin past his table, prettied up for the occasion. The smell of peonies overpowers the hall. He tucks his chin into one palm and looks at the person beside him.

“Iwa-chan, will you slow down?” he lectures, as his friend throws back another cup of sake. “So what if you dropped the ring while trying to get it out of your pocket? Hardly anyone remembers anymore. Of course, it’ll be in the wedding video forever, but I’m sure we’ll all have a good laugh about it in a few years—”

_“Shut. Up.”_

Iwaizumi looks pink in the face, either from the memory or from the amount of alcohol he’s consumed. He’s halfway through his bottle when he pours himself another cup, and there’s a second, empty one next to his elbow. Tooru looks down at his own cup, only his first and still unfinished. He’s not risking a hangover for when he makes the return to Tokyo in the morning; the team has got both training and a practice match lined up on their schedule.

His eyes flicker briefly towards the stage. Matsukawa looks happy as he speaks to one of his college friends, his new bride tucked up against his arm.

“At least your girlfriend wasn’t here to see it,” he hears himself say.

Iwaizumi scoffs. “Like you won’t show her the video first thing when it comes out.”

 _That’ll take months, Iwa-chan,_ he wants to say. _Do you plan to still be with her then?_

Instead, he says, “I hope her mother gets better soon. Shame she couldn’t come.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

That’s all Iwaizumi says, then punctuates the silence by taking another swig from his cup. His neck bobs when he swallows in a distracting way. Tooru doesn’t realize he’s staring until it registers a bit late that two girls at the next table are looking at him. He holds up a hand and waves cheerily, and they quickly look away with mirrored expressions of delight.

It’s not the first time he’s garnered looks this evening. A buzz had certainly traveled through the hall when he’d first arrived: the first captain to secure a medal for men’s volleyball in nearly fifty years. A few girls had already asked him to dance, and he’d politely obliged. But most of the guests had kept the whispering and general awe to themselves, not wanting to overshadow the bride, and he’s glad for it. He’s just here to congratulate his old friend and to have a nice time with Iwa-chan.

“Where’s Hanamaki, anyway?” Iwaizumi asks, tipping the last of his bottle into his cup.

“I’m sure he’s around here somewhere, using his ‘I’m best friends with the groom’ card to get with someone.” He smirks. “I see Kyouken-chan, though, and he looks mighty uncomfortable. How cute.”

Across the hall he can see his old underclassman scowling at one of the tables. He keeps tugging on the sleeve of his dress shirt, which he had not even bothered to iron for the occasion. Beside him, Yahaba looks like he’s speaking a mile a minute; by the fierce expression on his face, it seems to be a lecture of some sort.

Iwaizumi squints across the room. “Where? I don’t see him.”

Tooru rolls his eyes. “He’s _right there,_  Iwa-chan. God, how much have you had to drink at this point? I’m cutting you off.”

He has to pry the cup from Iwaizumi’s hand, then clamps his fingers around his wrist and hoists him up from the table. He doesn’t even stumble. It’s one of the more curious aspects of his drunk persona; he’ll get redder and redder in the face the more he drinks, but he never stumbles. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether he’s inebriated at all.

“Come on,” Tooru sighs. “Let’s get you some fresh air. And you call _me_ a baby.”

“Cuz you are,” he mumbles, but allows himself to be led out of the hall.

The air outside has gotten cooler now that autumn was soon upon them. It feels nice as it breezes past, almost splashing their faces with sobriety. Tooru quickly lets go of Iwaizumi’s wrist and begins walking in a random direction along the parking lot, trusting that he’ll be followed. They stroll over grainy asphalt for a while, quiet for the most part.

Eventually, he sighs, “My mother’s going to be insufferable now that Mattsun’s married. She thought for sure I’d be the first of us four to settle down.”

Iwaizumi, who’d been staring at the ground as they walked and aimlessly kicking at stray pebbles on occasion, looks up at him.

“Do you want to get married?”

“Right now? Definitely not.” His mouth slants into a frown. “It’s annoying. Once you’re at this age, all anyone ever asks you is when you’ll be getting married. Like I can even think about that when I haven’t even won gold yet.”

His mother is constantly fretting over his single status, and the women in her neighborhood always want to know whether he has someone special in his life. He’s become weary of endless blind dates and phone numbers, tired of daughters and nieces. None of his dreams at the moment involve settling down with a faceless girl.

Iwaizumi presses him, his voice sounding strange, “But you do want to get married one day?”

Tooru shrugs. “I don’t know. Do you?”

“I asked first.”

He stares at one of the streetlamps beaming down grey light onto the parking lot. The honest answer is _no_ —but that’s not something he can say to Iwaizumi. His best friend is one year into his happy relationship, walking his girlfriend home, making her pancakes for breakfast, calling her late at night, and trying his damned hardest to keep her happy. He’ll want to get married someday; it’s not a question that needs asking.

None of Tooru’s dreams at the moment involve settling down with a faceless girl. But they all involve hazy mornings with Iwa-chan, waking up in the same bed and pressing kisses upon his chest. They involve living out their days together in that crappy apartment with the two bedrooms. Wrestling for the remote. Washing dishes together in a tiny kitchenette. Thumbing food off each other’s mouths. Necking on the couch.

But that’s not something he can say to Iwaizumi.

“I guess…” He stalls, pretending to mull over his answer. The washed out color of the streetlight makes it hard to think at all. “I guess it depends on the person.”

A wrinkle splits between Iwaizumi’s brow. “What does that mean?”

But his question becomes lost to the void at that exact moment, when Tooru suddenly catches sight of himself in the reflection of a passing car window and all thoughts of marriage and unfulfilled loves vanish clean from his mind. His mouth falls open, and he throws himself at the glass.

 _“Please_ tell me,” he squawks, “that my hair hasn’t looked like this all night!”

His normally kept hair was now an unsightly mess from having wandered through the night. He attempts frantically to iron out the tangled frizz back into the effortless curls his hair was usually swept into, but the breeze refuses to cooperate.

“You look fine,” Iwaizumi tells him, gruff. “You always look fine.”

“This is _not_ fine. This is a _disaster.”_ He looks absolutely distraught, especially at the prospect of walking back into the hall looking this way. “Let’s just leave right now, Iwa-chan. Yeah? We already took the pictures and everything. No one will notice at all, I’m sure!”

“Dumbass. Is your hair really more important than Matsukawa’s wedding?”

“Mattsun doesn’t want me walking in there and scaring all his guests either, I’m sure of it. You’ll see, Iwa-chan. When it’s your wedding, you’ll want everything to be perfect, too.”

His attention returns to his own reflection as he attempts to drag his fingers through his hair like a makeshift comb, so he misses the way Iwaizumi stares at him for his words.

“I’m not getting married,” he says.

Tooru tuts impatiently. “Yes, I _know._ I _obviously_ meant, like, in the future.”

A few more seconds of silence pass in the same way, just Iwaizumi staring at him stare at himself. Then he asks, in a quiet voice, “Do you do that on purpose?”

Most of Tooru’s attention is still focused on his appearance. “Do what?”

“Say those cruel things.”

This finally succeeds in stilling Tooru, whose reflection blinks back at him looking just as confused as he feels. He slowly puts down his hands, turning with a question, but his voice get swallowed a moment later like sand going down his throat.

His back falls against the cool metal of the car, when Iwaizumi presses closer. He’s not red in the face like he was back in the hall, but his eyes are just as bright. When his hands come up to cup Tooru’s neck, a thumb brushing down the side of a cord in a gentle stroke, his body is unbearably warm.

“You know how I feel about you,” he says. His voice is rough with emotion and his eyes don’t move away from Tooru’s mouth when he speaks. “You’ve always known.”

Blood rushes to Tooru’s head. They’re in the middle of an empty parking lot, bodies pressed together, and Iwa-chan is looking at him like he’s seconds away from ravaging him right here against a stranger’s car. It’s such an attractive look that he almost loses all control of his bearings.

Forcing himself to look away is like a test of his crumbling strength of will.

“Stop it, Iwa-chan. You’re drunk.”

Iwaizumi looks undeterred. If anything, his expression turns more fierce.

“Have I been drunk for ten years?” His fierce look deepens suddenly into a burning glare, as he declares, with full confidence, “You like me, too.”

He says nothing to that.

“Admit it, Oikawa. I already know it.”

His shoulders grind into Tooru's chest like a human cage, pinning him into the metal with enough force to cause an ache down his body. Tooru can feel his breath on his neck, can feel his thumb dragging over his pulse. It’s hot. He looks sober and like he’s moments away from kissing him right on his pretty mouth.

Longing clumps in Tooru’s stomach. Iwaizumi’s mouth looks chapped and rough and like it’s perfect for kissing. He unconsciously leans in a little.

Then, just as quickly, he pulls back.

Setting a cool stare on Iwaizumi, he states, “You have a girlfriend.”

Iwaizumi looks too taken in by the way Tooru’s mouth forms each word to register anything properly. “So?”

 _So dump her, Iwa-chan._ “So fucking act like it, Iwa-chan. What do you think you’re doing right now?”

Surprise flickers across his face, before it dissolves quickly into a look of defiance. Unhinging his jaw, he puts a dark force behind his question. “So this doesn’t mean anything to you anymore?”

Tooru can’t bring himself to speak. This isn’t Iwaizumi, he’s got something foreign and reckless soaking in his blood, and he’d wake the next morning dripping with regret and self-loathing—or maybe he’d loathe Tooru more. He’d made the right decision, he knows it. But he can’t trust himself not to take it all back once he opens his mouth.

Iwaizumi pulls back like he’s been hit. The missing warmth of his hands on Tooru’s neck feels exponential.

“I get it,” he spits, fists shaking with fury. “You’re ending this. I fucking get it now. We’re _done.”_ He spins on his heel, asphalt grinding under his foot. “I’m going back inside. You can leave if you want.”

“Wait. _Iwa-chan.”_

Tooru makes a grab for his arm, but is forcibly shoved off. His jaw is locked so hard it has to be pried open before he can speak, and then, there is so much acid on his tongue that it oozes off each word.

“Don’t worry,” he seethes. “We’ll just pretend this didn’t happen, either.”

A wave of shame crashes into the pit of Tooru’s stomach, and he doesn’t stop Iwaizumi from leaving this time. Alone in the parking lot, he stares at himself in the blurred reflection on the car window, and it gazes back with sad, red-rimmed eyes. Not for the first time, Tooru wonders how he came to be such a selfish person. He wonders just when he came to think that Iwa-chan would always be available to him, would always be waiting for him, would always be _his._ He wonders if things would always stay this way forever.

The wedding hall feels a million miles away. He ends up never going back inside.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

Tooru watches as a shadow eclipses his ceiling, followed closely by a cut of orange light. It’s the same pattern he’s been watching now for hours, laid out on his soft sheets, too numb to process anything more than the occasional phenomenon of a cloud passing over the sun outside.

He’s not quite sure how much time passes before his stomach makes a loud complaint, but this is when he rolls himself off the bed and walks mechanically into the kitchen. There’s nothing more than a packaged meal in his fridge, which he pops into the microwave. As he waits on his food, his body automatically takes him to the couch to slump into the cushions. His eyes land instinctively on the frame he has perched on his table.

A familiar pain edges into his heart, seeing Iwa-chan’s face.

It’s a photo from graduation day; the background is pretty and spring-like, there are students in their Aoba Johsai uniforms milling about behind them, and no one could look at his bright smile in the snapshot and think anything was wrong.

It was after this photo, he remembers, when Iwaizumi had taken him by the arm to a deserted courtyard behind the school. It had been an endearing sight, watching him nervously flatten his hair and shift from one foot to the other, as if his best friend of all people made him feel _shy._

“About yesterday…” he’d begun.

And Tooru had looked back at him, still with that shiny smile and his big, innocent eyes, and asked him, “Did something happen yesterday?”

Maybe that was the exact moment when Tooru had realized he’d been born an inherently selfish person.

The microwave goes off with a soft tune somewhere in the kitchen, and he pulls himself out of his memory—Iwaizumi’s jaw locking, understanding passing through his eyes, his back as he quietly walked away—to put down the frame and make for his lackluster meal. It tastes like cardboard and old carrots, but he finishes off the entire tray before tossing it into the bin and returning to his room to stare some more at his dull ceiling. He’s almost gotten used to the routine.

He’ll have to go to Sendai eventually, he knows, at least to get his suitcase. He’s halfway been expecting to get a parcel in the mail with all his things thrown inside, and then he’d have no reason to return to Iwa-chan’s apartment anymore. Not that he has any reason or right now.

With a self-pitying groan, he rolls over on the bed and cocoons himself inside his sheets.

Underneath the thick padding, it takes a moment to register when his phone starts to ring. He peers out from under his shield, pushing up his glasses when they slip and frowning impatiently at the vibrating patch of his sheets. This has also become a routine; check his caller ID, glare at his mother’s number, then toss his phone aside until it eventually falls silent. She hasn’t stopped calling, but he hasn’t yet forgiven her.

This time, however, he does a double take at the number before scrambling to accept the call on the fourth ring. He could never ignore his sister.

“You are going to _regret_ picking up,” she snaps, once he answers. “I could have forgiven you if you were in a ditch somewhere, physically incapable of answering your phone.”

Tooru falls back with a huff. “What do you want?”

“I want to know what’s going on in my little brother’s head that he’s hidden himself away from society like some kind of shut-in. Where are you? Why aren’t you answering mom’s calls?”

He rolls his eyes at her dramatization. “I’m in my apartment. I didn’t answer her calls because I don’t want to talk to her.”

His candidness seems to give her pause. After a brief moment of silence, she broaches, with a delicate voice, “She said you two had some sort of fight.”

“We didn’t have a fight. I just told her something she didn’t want to hear.”

“...Was it over what we were talking about before? About Hajime-kun?”

He doesn’t respond, glaring instead at the ceiling and letting her draw her own conclusions. He’s sure whatever she imagines wouldn’t be too far off the mark. Through most of his childhood, she would joke incessantly about his attachment to Iwa-chan and their unusually close friendship; making the leap from there to the truth wouldn’t be too difficult.

Eventually, she sighs. “At least give her a chance, Tooru. I’m sure she’ll come around after some time.” He says nothing, just burns a hole into the ceiling, and she pushes, “She did sound very sorry, you know. And she’s been sick with worry. She even went to Hajime-kun’s place looking for you, but he—”

 _“What?”_ Tooru bolts upright, and a drop of fear spears his stomach like an ink splotch. “She talked to Iwa-chan?”

“Don’t get mad at her, Tooru. No one has heard from you for three days! She thought you’d be at his apartment, but he told her you hadn’t been around.”

“What did she say to him?” he demands, yanking himself out of his sheets. His feet land firmly on the floor, and then he grapples for his keys and his wallet from the jeans he had tossed over his desk chair three days ago, the night he had returned to his apartment with a shattered heart.

“I don’t know and I didn’t ask. I was more worried about _you.”_

With a quick look in his mirror, he combs fingers through his hair hoping to make himself look presentable to the world, pulls on a button-up to cover his exposed arms, and rushes out of the apartment with one of his fingers looped through his keyring.

“I have to go,” he tells his sister. “I’m not dead. I’ll call you back later.”

“Tooru, don’t be hasty—” she begins, but he ends the call before she can say anything more.

The station is predictably muggy and crowded on a weekend afternoon. Tooru’s height allows him to look over the heads of people at the incoming train schedule, though he garners a few looks and can only hope the rim of his cap effectively keeps his identity hidden. He taps his travel pass, boards the next bullet train, and quietly finds an empty seat where he can watch the scenery cut past at impossible speeds.

He tries calling Iwaizumi once, but there’s no answer. There hasn’t been an answer now for three days and Tooru hadn’t been expecting one this time around. But he still couldn’t resist making the call.

By the time he stumbles out of the station and catches a bus out of the heart of the city, a slight edge of anxiety seeps into his calm exterior.

What if Iwaizumi really, truly wants nothing more to do with him?

It’s always been him and Iwa-chan, and the rest of the world. They’d ruled their street as boys and ruled the court as they grew up into men, all of it together. He’s not sure he even knows anymore, how to live life without Iwa-chan.

That realization hits him harder than ever the moment he’s standing outside the familiar apartment, staring at the numbers etched into the door plate. There’s a sense of finality in this scene, like an ending to a story that’s been too long in the making, and it fills him with a sense of dread. Because for all his grand talk, Oikawa Tooru has never been very good at endings. The soft rap of a volleyball hitting the floor, the cool leather of a diploma fitted in his hand, the mistrust in Iwaizumi’s eyes as they stood before the Tokyo skyline; these are all some of the most terrifying experiences of his life.

He’d rather paste on a shiny smile and pretend the world is rainbows than admit that he’s scared of going all the way to the end with Iwa-chan.

“How did you even put up with me all this time?” he murmurs to the door, his palm pressed flat against the faded wood. He tries to muster up a low chuckle, but all he feels are hot pinpricks rise up in his eyes and then his vision quickly blurs.

_“Hah… shit.”_

He sniffs, forcibly blinking them away.

He’s so pathetic.

There’s a crinkle of plastic and a jingle of keys behind him. He quickly rubs at his eyes under his glasses, hoping none of Iwaizumi’s neighbors catch him out here like this while he’s at his lowest, and tries to size himself up enough to finally ring the bell. He doesn’t have his keys, but then, he’s not sure he’s welcome to let himself in anymore either.

Then he hears from behind, “Oikawa?”

He coils up at the familiar voice, hardly daring to believe it. A shrill whistling starts up in his ears.

Iwaizumi is standing behind him, staring suspiciously at the man loitering outside his door. There’s a plastic bag slung around his wrist from the convenience store. When Tooru slowly turns, shame-faced and caught in the act, he finally recognizes him.

“It _is_ you.” A flash of rage quickly passes through his eyes, eclipsing the initial surprise. “What the _hell_ are you doing here?”

Tooru had been expecting the anger, had been hoping for it even, but it still aches in all the worst ways. He’d never wanted Iwa-chan to look like this. He’d never wanted to be the reason Iwa-chan ever looked like this. _I’m sorry,_ he wants to say, to press himself into his chest and babble against his neck, like the giant mess that he is, _I’m sorry, Iwa-chan, I was wrong, I was selfish, and I’m sorry okay I was really really wrong and I’m sorry._

He pitches forward. His cap goes flying, and Iwaizumi drops his bag in surprise when hands curl around the shape of his jaw, thumbs press firmly against the ends of his mouth, a body pelts into his.

Their mouths smash together.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

The cherry blossoms don’t bloom for their high school graduation.

The day before their ceremony, the third-years from the volleyball team meet for breakfast in Hanamaki’s home, walk to school together as a pack for possibly the last time, endure lengthy speeches from their homeroom teachers about futures and destinies, and clean out their desks for the next year’s students. No one chatters by the lockers as they pack up their shoes for the last time. The atmosphere around the third-years corridor is a little quiet, a little subdued.

And the only thing Tooru can talk about is the absence of cherry blossoms for their graduation ceremony.

“You just don’t understand, Iwa-chan,” he tuts, letting them into his home. “I’ve been preparing my Instagram for _months._ Everything on my feed is pink-themed so that my graduation photo would blend in perfectly. Now all that’s _ruined.”_

Iwaizumi looks unimpressed as they unwind their scarves and pull out of their shoes. “If only you put as much thought and effort into your English homework as you do into your stupid Instagram layout.”

“Don’t try to lecture me. You’re just as bad at English as I am.”

“You’re the one who was always copying my homework!”

“That must be why my grades were so _horrific.”_ With a dramatic flair, he lays his knuckles on his forehead before gliding into the kitchen, knowing that Iwaizumi would follow. “Whatever. It’s all over now. We’re done with that class and we’re done with awful Ono-sensei.”

“We’re almost done with Seijou,” Iwaizumi adds, thoughtfully.

 _“Ugh. Iwa-chan.”_ Tooru kicks his side lightly with his sock-clad foot, ignoring his look of revulsion. “We agreed not to get all soft and emotional, remember? If I wanted to cry, I’d go watch Tobio-chan attempt to engage people like a normal human being. Nothing sadder than that.”

Iwaizumi shakes his head. “Leave the kid alone, would you?”

Tooru pops open the fridge in search of a jug of water. There’s a note on the door from his mother explaining that she had run out to the market, which was clearly why they weren’t currently being fussed over. As he pours them each a cool glass, he states, darkly, “I’ll leave him alone as long as he doesn’t follow me to Tokyo looking for volleyball advice.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t say anything to that. He just glares into his glass of water before chugging it all down at once.

“That’s not to say,” Tooru continues, much more sincerely, “that I’m barring all visitors. If a certain best friend wants to come explore the city with me or bring me lots of souvenirs that remind me of home, I might make some space for him to sleep over.”

Despite his obvious struggle, a grin splits out across Iwaizumi’s face. “Sounds to me like some shitty guy is just looking for a chump to do his chores for him.”

 _“Hardly,_ Iwa-chan. I’ve seen how you keep your room.” But he’s grinning just as brightly.

He takes Iwaizumi’s empty glass and his own to rinse them out in the sink, then leaves them upside down in the rack to dry. The kitchen is silent, oddly devoid of a comeback to his blatant jibe, but Tooru thinks nothing of it as he dries his hand on a towel before turning back.

Then he startles, almost bruising his back on the kitchen counter, because Iwaizumi has come to stand _really close_ and Tooru’s heart bursts like it’s been squeezed in the hands of the boy he’s loved since he was fifteen and a half. _Calm down,_ he tells himself, over the thunder. _Iwa-chan doesn’t know._

“Why the jump scare, Iwa-chan?” he jokes, though it sounds more uneasy than like he’s teasing. He leans back, his palm on the edge of the counter to steady himself.

Iwaizumi looks back at him with a determined set to his jaw; it’s a wholly familiar look on his face, usually restricted to the court and terribly difficult Calculus problems, but sometimes it’s just for the everyday moments when he’s gathering his courage. Tooru knows this look well.

“Listen,” he says, firmly, “I know we said we weren’t going to get sad and emotional. So I’m only going to say this once and you’d better not ask me to say it again. Okay?”

Tooru nods clumsily.

He sucks in his breath, then speaks in a calm, resolute voice. “You’re my best friend. And I don’t want that to change, even if you’re hundreds of kilometers away. So you’d better call me enough to get on my last nerve, and you’d better come home so much we don’t even get a _chance_ to miss you. Even when we’re old and sixty and dying or whatever, I want us to still be best friends. _Got it?”_

He ends with a burning ferocity in his gaze, daring Tooru to turn his words into one of his usual jokes. Behind that intensity, his eyes are so forthright and bright that there is no question of his sincerity.

Time inside the kitchen seems to enter a sort of vortex. Tooru feels as if he’s been sucked from his body, watching this moment occur from the other side of a fuzzy barrier. He sees two boys, and one of them is in love with the other so _dearly_ and so secretly that he falls asleep to an ache in his chest every night.

He whispers, as if the moment was susceptible to shatter, “Hey, Iwa-chan? Are you saying that fifty years from now, you still want to be with me?”

Something like embarrassment ghosts over Iwaizumi’s face, before he’s resolute once more. “Of course, dummy.”

“Do you know what that sounds like?” he asks, with a calm he doesn’t feel.

Iwaizumi takes a single step forward, pinning Tooru even harder against the kitchen counter. As he does so, he cocks his head by a slight angle, letting open curiosity play out on his face. His eyes are so clear and bright, it reminds Tooru of synced tosses and the innocence of a victory embrace.

He asks, “What do you want it to sound like?”

Tooru wonders whether he can really say it: _I want it to sound like you love me, too, Iwa-chan._

After three years—three years of shamed glances and looking away, of feeling so unsettled and foreign in his own body when his best friend leans in close, of seeking praise and affection from his best friend like it’s an addiction, three years of thinking that his love has been doomed from the very start—is it really okay to dare think that his love could be allowed, accepted, _returned?_

Instead, he says, “Hey, Iwa-chan? Will you forgive me if I kiss you right now?”

He pitches forward without waiting for a response, before the words are even fully out of his mouth.

In that old and faded kitchen, where they first cried together over a volleyball match, where they made the decision to move on to Seijou together, where they learned college would be where their life paths would diverge for the very first time, Tooru fits his hands along his best friend’s jaw and leans into him. He takes his best friend’s face like he’s cradling something precious, and kisses him good and proper.

The shock filtering through Iwaizumi’s eyes is all he sees before he shuts his own.

It’s close-mouthed, too dry and chaste for what Tooru has been imagining since he was sixteen and first came to accept why sharing a room with Iwaizumi made him feel so warm and squirmish somewhere underneath his stomach. But he presses in more urgently, taking all he can of this mouth while he has it beneath his own.

Iwaizumi is the first to pull back, but his hands come up to grip Tooru’s wrists and keep them held against his jaw. There’s no anger behind his eyes, no shock anymore nor even a single wretched emotion—only a calm like the stagnant, sea-green ocean.

“You’ve thought about this before?” he murmurs. “It wasn’t on impulse?”

Tooru smirks, only because he’s _so afraid_ of this moment that it’s the only thing keeping him rooted in the reality of what he’s done. “I’m hurt, Iwa-chan,” he chuckles, but it’s a watery sound. “Is kissing your best friend something you do on impulse? Is that what you think of me?”

Iwaizumi studies him still with that quiet glance, unpacking all of him.

Then a grin breaks across his face. “I think you’re a real shitty bastard.”

And he kisses Tooru this time, square on his warm, pliant mouth, pulling him in like the earth pulling in the surge of the tide. Tooru inhales like he’s being given _life,_ grabbing for his mouth, clawing at his shoulders, pulling at his shirt. This one won’t be chaste, it’ll be open and slick and he’ll bruise Iwa-chan’s handsome mouth and make him so completely his own they’ll become two bodies joined by one being. This one will be a kiss they remember for decades down the road.

He’s only just curled his fingers into the little hairs on Iwaizumi’s nape, mouth slanting the perfect angle, when Iwaizumi breaks away again.

“...Auntie,” he rumbles.

Tooru frowns, his mouth unconsciously following after Iwaizumi’s as if seeking the heat of his lips, before the word fully sinks in and an icy dread overcomes his bones. In one single motion, his eyes snap open and cast a sweeping gaze towards the entrance.

His mother stands at the door, a grocery bag cradled in one arm. She opens her mouth as if to speak, then flicks her gaze between her son, his childhood friend, and the hand curled around Iwaizumi’s nape. A white cast drains color from her face, making her look so very pale and afraid.

“T-Tooru…?” she whispers. “What’s going on?”

Somewhere far away, a ball hits the ground.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

His pictures are still on the wall. Tooru stares at them blankly; he’d been expecting to find them gone, maybe even left for shreds on the floor. It’s unclear what exactly this could mean, but he tampers down the gust of longing that surges through him, the hope that maybe Iwa-chan would forgive him even after all that he’s done. He’s trying his best to be his least selfish self right now, and that means forgiveness is only a mere pipe dream.

When a shadow crosses over the wall, followed closely by a body, he quickly looks down at his hands joined in his lap.

Iwaizumi sets down a glass of lemonade on the folding table in front of him, then slumps down on the other side with a piece of bare ice pressed to his red bottom lip. Tooru peers at him with what he hopes is a guilty expression but feels more like a twist of embarrassment.

“Um… sorry,” he says, half-heartedly, gesturing to Iwaizumi’s battered mouth.

He rolls his eyes in a clear dismissal, then cuts straight to the chase. “What are you doing here, Oikawa?”

Tooru plays with the straw in his glass, pulling it out of his drink and staring at the way it causes ripples in the swirl of lemonade and ice. Eventually, he sighs. “What did my mom say to you?”

The question doesn’t seem to be the least bit surprising to Iwaizumi, who answers, simply, “She asked me where you were.”

“Is that all she said?” A frown tugs at his mouth. He knows his mother, and it couldn’t have stopped there. His suspicious gaze locks with Iwaizumi’s guarded expression, and he accuses him, “You’re not telling me something.”

“So what? Are you the only one allowed to keep secrets? The only one allowed to be a cryptic little shit?” he spits, _seethes_ past the gap in his teeth. “I thought I’d try for once, dangling emotional bait in someone’s face and watching them jump for it, but I don’t think I’m fucked up enough to have fun with it the way you seem to.”

Tooru’s mind reels like he’s been slapped and it feels disjointed from his body when he forces himself not to physically react. Iwaizumi is throwing hurtful words at him in vengeance and he absolutely deserves to, and Tooru will sit here and absorb it all if that’s what it takes. And he’s not entirely wrong.

“I just want to know,” he says, weakly, “that she didn’t say anything to you that she shouldn’t have.”

“And if she told me to never see you again?” Iwaizumi challenges. “What are you going to do then?”

A piece of ice in his glass cracks in half just as his blood becomes frozen with dread. He stammers, “She didn’t _really_ say that to you, did she?”

For a brief flicker of a moment, something that resembles concern passes through Iwaizumi’s face. Tooru wonders if he looks as terrible as he feels; his lips feel pale and shaky, his eyes, red and tired. This is the least comfortable he’s ever felt inside this apartment, and it feels entirely wrong, being on guard in this familiar place. Maybe it’s just as jarring for Iwaizumi to have closed himself off to his childhood friend.

But the shadow of concern dissipates as quickly as it had appeared, and he scoffs. “She asked me if I really loved you.” Holding up two fingers, he forms quotes around his next words. _“‘Like that.’”_

Tooru’s throat lurches and he stabs his straw back into his glass. “What… did you say?”

Iwaizumi levels him with a flat look. “What do you _think_ I said?”

“I…” His tongue swipes over his lips, and he feels sticky and shameless when he admits, in a quiet voice, “...I know what I _want_ you to have said.”

The corner of Iwaizumi’s mouth twitches, barely discernible, but it’s the only reaction that suggests he’d been affected by the words in any way. The ice against his lip has melted already but he seems not to have noticed, and lines of ice water trail down his arm to leave a growing damp spot on his shorts.

“I told her,” he says, “that sometimes men love men.”

Emotion stabs at Tooru’s eyes, and he shuts them. Behind that black canvas, he thinks of standing on his parents’ porch and looking up at the night sky, seeing a memory reflected on it from long ago. He remembers how it had felt to be eighteen and scared to admit to the world that he was in love with his best friend, how much he loved holding him and kissing him in his old, faded kitchen. _It was just a phase, mom,_ he had told her, because she had wept the whole night and turned away from him in the morning, scared and confused. _Iwa-chan and I were just trying it out. We were getting it out of our system._ He’d taken her in his arms and pressed his cheek to her hair, stroking her and promising her, _But it’s done now, mom. It won’t happen again._

When he opens his eyes, Iwaizumi is watching him silently and, looking back at him, Tooru realizes he had been wrong to think that time had never managed to make him move. He no longer looks like the boy from graduation who had approached him in the courtyard behind their school, hopeful but shy about their illicit encounter. He just looks tired. He looks as tired as Tooru feels, of this huge mess that’s been simmering for years under the surface of their every interaction.

A wretched guilt seeps deep into his bones like a heavy burden, and he wonders how many years is too many before apologies become tokens for show rather than worthy of forgiveness. Ten years sounds like an eternity.

Ten long years he’s made Iwa-chan wait for this moment.

His voice cracks in all the wrong places, when he confesses finally, “I just didn’t want my parents to _hate_ me, Iwa-chan. But I don’t want _you_ to hate me either. And I just didn’t know how to make those two things fit together.”

At eighteen he had loved his plastic glamour but been too young and afraid at heart to understand that shiny smiles had no place in real love. At twenty-eight, he finally understands these three things; that his mother’s chokehold on his life is no longer an anchor when he’s drowned in darker waters; that Iwaizumi will always see through his grandeur, and he loves him for it; and that if _I’m in love with you_ burns in his throat like arson, then he should just fucking _say it._

Iwaizumi’s face reluctantly softens, hearing the raw emotion behind his voice. He sighs, “Oikawa—”

But Tooru is finally prepared to confess all.

“There were _so_ many times I could have said something to you,” he admits. “I thought about it a lot, _so much,_ constantly. But I was so selfish, I couldn’t do it even when I _knew_ you were waiting for me. I thought we were perfect how we were because I had you and I had my parents, and we were all doing so good at pretending everything was fine that maybe we could just keep doing that forever.”

And perhaps nothing fills him with self-loathing more than this, that he’d seen Iwaizumi’s affections as a constant no matter how far he strayed. Some part of him had thought it didn’t matter if he took all the time he wanted, because Iwaizumi would _always_ be available to him.

Then a woman had appeared in his apartment one quiet night, and it had been like a cold splash into reality, realizing that he wouldn’t always be waiting around for Tooru to pick himself up together and finally choose where their relationship should stand.

Maybe he had decided Tooru just wasn’t worth waiting for anymore.

Iwaizumi—who hadn’t reacted to his confession in the slightest, his face poised like sculpted marble—allows confusion to crack his stony expression. “Wait. But.” A frown cleaves his forehead. “Then what the hell was that, last year, at Matsukawa’s wedding? Were you just fucking with me?”

Tooru smiles without mirth into his glass, swirling his lemonade like it’s got him hypnotized; the sting of regret from that night is still like a fresh wound. “You had already made the choice to move on with your new girlfriend, Iwa-chan. She was good for you. I thought you would come to your senses, and you would think that I had…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Iwaizumi interrupts, firmly. He looks annoyed just by Tooru having had the thought. “I didn’t do anything I didn’t already want to do. The sake just gave me the nerve to do it.”

“You’re not the type of man who can step out on someone,” Tooru insists, in a low voice. “You would have regretted it. You would have _hated me.”_

He could handle anything else. He could take woeful regret, flinging clothes and a heated argument like the ones they used to have when he pushed himself too hard, even a scorned ex-lover showing up at his door and blaming him for her relationship falling apart. But he couldn’t stand looking into Iwa-chan’s eyes and seeing a dark emotion there that should never be for Tooru.

“If we did anything,” Iwaizumi says, “then I wouldn’t have hated you. I would have hated myself.”

“I didn’t want you to hate yourself because of me,” he responds, simply.

And it’s another truth. He’s selfish in that way, too; he wants the things that he wants, but he also wants to be the only one who can grant Iwa-chan total happiness. He wants to be the only one who can make him smile over stupid jokes, like that fond way he rolls his eyes, shoves Tooru’s shoulder, making Tooru think that maybe _dumbass_ isn’t an insult after all if it’s spoken in that way. He wants to be the only one who gets to tell Iwa-chan he’s cute and watch the tips of his ears glow red, imagining how that bashful quirk of his mouth might feel good when it’s being kissed away.

Iwaizumi breathes out slowly, looking away from him.

He looks not angry. But he’s not smiling either.

“All right,” he speaks eventually, bringing his gaze back to him, and it’s been only a few seconds but it feels as if they’ve both aged in that time. “Are you done saying your piece, then?”

Tooru’s stomach curdles like it’s been battered, because this is it. His fingertips feel cold and he steeples them on the edge of the table, hoping it’ll be enough to keep him grounded when he replies, meekly, “Yes, I… Iwa-chan, you can punch me if you want, but…” He swallows. “Can I kiss you goodbye?”

The last time. Just one last time.

He should be allowed this much, after a decade.

Iwaizumi looks at him strangely. “Are you going somewhere? You brought all your shit here saying you’d be staying a while. It’s all still in your room.”

Tooru stares at his fingers and doesn’t understand what was just said; it wasn’t a _yes_ or _no_ and he still doesn’t know if it’s okay to kiss Iwa-chan. Then his fingers blur, and he realizes belatedly that his eyes feel hot, the whole room feels hot, and the answer he’d gotten might have been better than a _yes._ He dares to look up. “What does that mean?”

Iwaizumi doesn’t answer; he looks down at himself and seems to realize for the first time that his block of ice has completely melted, leaving an uncomfortable spot on his shorts and a drip from his elbow.

 _“Fuck,”_ he cusses, under his breath. “Hang on, I gotta dry off.”

He makes a motion to get up, and Tooru lunges over the tiny folding table, throwing himself across the distance between them and grabbing on with a single hand to Iwaizumi’s arm so that he can’t get away. He blinks up at him, mouth open.

“Iwa-chan,” he repeats, urgently, _“what did you mean?”_

Iwaizumi stares down at the white knuckles wrapped around his forearm, then up at Tooru’s face, so young and pretty like he’s still that teenaged boy who’d won the Best Setter award and smiled up at the stadium like he’d known he was destined for things even bigger and brighter. His glasses have slipped down to the end of his nose which feels hot red with snot, but he really can’t bring himself to care, because if Iwa-chan can’t see him when he’s like this then there’s truly no one who knows the real Oikawa Tooru.

Iwaizumi quietly sits back down, because he’s never much had thick armor against Tooru’s most earnest self. When he stares up at the ceiling, it’s almost as if he’s _shy._ Even though they’re almost thirty. Even though everything has been all wrong for so many years. He still has it in him to look like that hopeful boy from their high school graduation, the one who first fell in love with Tooru.

He molds a hand around his neck, then admits, “I meant… stay.”

Tooru releases his arm, but he doesn’t pull himself back over the table. “Even though I fucked everything up?” he asks, and his voice shakes on the last word because he knows it, he _knows_ he’s the reason it’s all fucked up and _he’s_ fucked up, and Iwa-chan _can’t_ love him despite all that, _he can’t._

The sigh that rushes from Iwaizumi’s mouth is so coarse that it almost scares him, until he says, “I didn’t really mind waiting for you, you know. All those years.” He sounds sincere like he actually means it, as impossible as it is to believe. “It didn’t matter if it was fucked up, I fucking _loved_ you. But then years started going by and you never said anything, and I started feeling like I was pathetic, waiting so long on something that wasn’t even a sure thing anymore.”

“Then I met a nice girl because she had lost her dog and I was the one who found it, and it felt like fate, you know? You seemed to have made up your mind, and now here she was.” He smiles bitterly. “If I’d known you were gonna finally come around, I never would have brought her into this apartment.”

Tooru’s eyes dart towards the pictures on the wall. He nudges up his glasses. “I mean, you never really…”

His thought trails into nothingness, because they both know: that after that first encounter, the three of them locked in a smoldering triangle of discomfort and uncertainty, Iwaizumi had never brought her back to this place again. Two years, and they never even moved together into one place.

It was never spoken but always known, that this place was only for Tooru; the couch was for him to watch his supernatural documentaries late in the night; the far cabinet in the bathroom was for him to stack all of his many products; the shoes at the door were his; the pictures on the walls were his; the spare room was his. And Iwaizumi had always made sure that it would remain that way, that Tooru could always feel comfortable barging into this apartment and thinking of it as _home._

“I guess we know,” he says, with a shake of his head, “who was the priority in my relationship. It’s really fucking obvious now, isn’t it? Even when I was dating someone else, somehow I was still dating you.” He smirks at Tooru from across the table. “Guess I’m also kinda fucked up.”

And there’s really no other way to describe this, their tangled mess of a relationship with a conclusion that’s been a lifetime in the making. They took too many detours, missed too many chances, to get to this point. But they’re here.

“Iwa-chan.” Tooru sniffs loudly, wiping his nose with his sleeve, then says, “I’m high maintenance.”

Iwaizumi bursts into gritty laughter, craning back his neck so that the sound echoes all the way up to the ceiling and through the apartment. It’s gruff and it’s handsome. When he settles back down, he’s grinning. “Trust me. I know.”

“And I’m selfish,” Tooru adds. “I’m _really_ selfish. I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.”

“Yeah. You’re a selfish _ass.”_ His grin expands. “But not all the time. Sometimes you’re _almost_ tolerable, and I like you then.”

“I’m a fucking _delight,”_ Tooru wants to say, but his throat blubbers at the worst possible moment and all he manages is a single sound before it turns thick with emotion and he swallows the words along with the burn.

Hands slither across the table and grasp his own, and he looks up into Iwaizumi’s smiling face and finds it too fantastical to believe that this moment could be true, even with fingers twined around his own, a rough palm dragging over his knuckles, all these signs that this was all _real._ He flips Iwaizumi’s hands over and brings them to his face, pressing them against his cheeks; they’re warm and comforting, just like his Iwa-chan.

Iwaizumi’s expression suddenly turns grim. He presses his lips into a thin line, before murmuring, “Oikawa... this is it. I hope you know, there’s no turning back from this.”

Tooru answers with a weepy laugh. “I don’t plan to let you go this time either, Iwa-chan, so I hope you know what you’re getting into.”

They never look away from each other, even when he sears kisses on each wrist and roves circles with his thumbs on the back of each hand. This is how close he wants his Iwa-chan to be, pressed against his flesh until it leaves imprints on his body.

And it really feels like forever this time, when Iwaizumi indulges him with one of his fondest smiles.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think I do.”

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

There’s a chill in the air even though they’ve already reached the turning point of the seasons. Tooru is no stranger to frost, having grown up in the countryside of Miyagi, but he’s not used to cold at this time of the year. With a quiet shiver, he sinks deeper into the water, only feeling more at ease once steam licks at his shoulders and his cheeks feel rosy from the heat.

He slicks back his hair with a wet hand, dragging out a sigh up at the night sky.

When he angles his neck to the side, it’s to his satisfaction to realize that he had caught Iwaizumi staring.

“You’re going to make me blush, Iwa-chan,” he teases, with a tinkling laugh. “I’m completely immodest.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen,” he responds, unfazed. He then reaches out a thumb to press to Tooru’s chin, turning his face from one side to the other as if in assessment. “You’re really good-looking,” he says, out of the blue.

Tooru almost _does_ blush, if not for catching himself in time. These sorts of praises about his appearance are nothing new and have even multiplied as he’s been continuously thrust under the public eye. But compliments from Iwaizumi are rare and, when he does give them, wholly sincere.

“What’s this about?” he questions, and hopes it doesn’t appear to be a bashful move when he tucks a curl behind one ear. “Are you rediscovering my beautiful face? I know I’ve been busy these days, but you didn’t _really_ forget what I look like, did you?”

Iwaizumi retracts his thumb, then eases back against the wall of the spring. “They were playing one of your interviews at the market last week, so a lot of people were talking about it.”

“Oh.” He mimics Iwaizumi’s posture, then frowns when he shares, “I thought I found a grey hair last week. It was a false alarm, thank god. But it made me realize we’re almost that age when it _could_ have been real.”

Standing in front of his bathroom mirror with a single strand of hair pinched between his fingers, the years had all caught up with Tooru at once. Soon his hair would truly change color, though stress might become its catalyst over old age. All those years of skipping sleep have finally accumulated under his eyes, and it’s become a permanent part of his face. And recently when he smiles, the lines on his face take too long to smooth out as if trying to embed themselves as wrinkles. He doesn’t know where his youth went. He doesn’t know where he wasted it away.

Iwaizumi exhales, as if sensing the change in atmosphere. “You’ve never looked better, honestly.”

 _“Never?_ That’s not true, Iwa-chan. I was always unbelievably handsome growing up. You were there. You saw it firsthand.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay. Don’t quote me on this but your face was pretty all right back in the day. But…” His face softens, and then his thumb reaches out again, this time to skid along the lines around his mouth, the circles under his eyes. “I don’t know. Something’s changed and I like it.”

Tooru wrinkles his nose. “I just look _old.”_

 _“Grown,”_ he counters. “It’s a good look on you.”

But Tooru doesn’t feel grown, most days. If aging only meant accepting the deep set of wrinkles or the new tightness around his eyes, perhaps he could see it in himself. But he’s just now shy of reaching his third decade, and forgiveness still doesn’t come easily, old anxieties still keep him hidden in bed most mornings, and pressure still chokes him in the moments when he’s most insecure. And when he looks in the mirror, mapping out the new changes to his face, still all he sees is the boy who wasted away his life pretending he wasn’t in love with his best friend.

Aloud to Iwaizumi, he only says, “I think you would look really good with grey hair, Iwa-chan! You’d finally look as old as your personality.”

“If only there was a way you could look as hideous as _your_ personality.”

Tooru clicks his tongue, faking offense. “I can’t believe you’re going to be mean to me while we’re on vacation.”

“What I need is a vacation from _you.”_

“Mm?” Tooru scoots closer, just until his cheek can skirt along the slope of Iwaizumi’s shoulder, and smiles up at him through his lashes like he’s made up only of purity. “Then why’d you beg me to come, Iwa-chan?” he hums.

Iwaizumi says nothing even though they both know he’d done no such thing. In the most recent year, they’ve become used to seeing each other only in snatches of time, usually the few scattered weekends when Tooru can spare the days to come visit the apartment. His schedule these days is packed full, of matches, trainings, interviews, photoshoots, and life hasn’t been this hectic for Tooru since four years ago. But four years ago, there also hadn’t been this heavy weight on his shoulders to match his past achievements and bring home another shiny medal for Japan. It’s not often he’s not found inside a gymnasium, drenched in sweat and dedication.

For the most part they’ve had to make do with silence or with Iwaizumi occasionally catching pieces of Tooru’s interviews in the early mornings before work. Then exactly three days ago, Tooru had received a call just seconds before dozing over his mess of team charts, net alignments, and old takeout.

“Come visit this weekend,” Iwaizumi had ordered. “Else I’ll shoot you into the sun.”

The call was disconnected before Tooru had uttered even one word.

He’d shown up in Miyagi to find a rental car parked in front of Iwaizumi’s building, and himself in that car an hour later, rifling through the maps Iwaizumi had printed out with their route traced in red ink. They’d stopped for lunch at a small diner along their route, because they were no longer at an age when a cherry popsicles and cup ramen diet would count as any sort of sustenance. While Iwaizumi filled their tank at the gas station across the street, Tooru had messaged his vice-captain, _I’ve been kidnapped by a hunky criminal~_ _Don’t look for me~_

Crossing into Hokkaido hadn’t been an immediately recognizable change. Just slowly the monotonous scenery had turned into even bigger trees, and then there were mountains, and Tooru’s window needed to be rolled back up because the springy breeze was no longer so warm. Tooru had grappled for Iwaizumi’s hand, pulling it from the gear shift to hold on to it when he pointed out, brightly, “Iwa-chan, look! Mountains!”

Iwaizumi’s eyes hadn’t strayed from the road, but Tooru’s enthusiasm had caught his mouth in a smile. “I’m looking,” he’d promised, with a chuckle.

They don’t get these kinds of mountains in Miyagi, or even this kind of stagnant nature where you can’t tell when the next town will come or if it ever even will. Tooru’s been on hiking trails with his family and a staple field trip to Sendai-jo in middle school, but they hadn’t been anything like this. It feels like they’re alone in the world, going down an earthy road and being looked down upon by pretty mountains and volcanoes that were larger than life; surrounded by them all, Tooru had felt exceptionally small, but in a good way, like he and Iwa-chan were really running away together and no one would ever find them here.

But to his question, all Iwaizumi says is, “I told you, I saw your interview last week. You looked tired.”

Tooru smiles against his shoulder.

He had done well finding them a secluded inn where there was little chance of Tooru being approached, though it was an eager worker behind the front desk who had explained the calmative benefits of their springs and unpacked all of Iwaizumi’s hidden intentions. Tooru had ushered him into their room quickly following their check in, to unclothe him and press kisses upon his body.

Now, he pulls back and stares wistfully into the open air, sighing, “If we didn’t check out tomorrow, would that be really bad?”

Iwaizumi looks at him. “What are you trying to run away from?”

“I’m not _running away.”_ His bottom lip protrudes by a fraction, that Iwaizumi would even ask such a thing; he knows Tooru is sick of running from things after a lifetime of it. “It’s just, once we leave here, I won’t get to see you again until Golden Week. And even that would only be for a couple days, because we’d have the qualifiers at the end of the month to get ready for. And if we make it through _those_ —which we _obviously_ will—then I’ll be spending my summer in France for the tournaments and I don’t even _know_ when the next time would be that I could come back. _And—”_

“So basically,” Iwaizumi interrupts, dryly, “you’re just trying to brag that you’re going to France.”

“Not completely!” His face morphs rapidly from petulance to a boastful smirk. “Though, I mean, if there’s one thing in life you should brag about, wouldn’t it be this?”

“Like you’re not already fucking preening yourself every time you talk?”

“Credit where it’s due, Iwa-chan,” Tooru laughs, dragging his hands through his hair again nice and slow because he knows Iwaizumi likes it.

The grated noise of a door sliding open interrupts their banter, before two men slip in through the showers and approach the springs. When their eyes land on Tooru, they both pause to take a second, closer look before moving on reluctantly towards the other side of the bath, quietly murmuring amongst themselves.

Iwaizumi watches them warily until they’ve settled in their own corner, then sighs. “Let’s go in. We’ve been here long enough.”

Tooru tilts up his chin, annoyed by the intrusion, but nods.

They rinse off quietly at the showers before returning to the dressing rooms, unfolding fresh yukata and rifling through their things in the lockers. Tooru turns on his phone, then frowns to see a message from his mother waiting for him. He deletes it quickly, hoping he had been discreet, but Iwaizumi catches on anyway.

“Just answer her, won’t you?” he chides, shrugging into his sleeves. “You’ll have to see her anyway when we head to my parents’ for Golden Week.”

Tooru gravely does up his sash and mutters, in a low voice, “I can’t believe you forgave her.”

His mouth pulls into a frown, brittle at the ends as it often is when they broach this topic. This has become a tired conversation in their relationship. “I guess I just get it,” he says. “I’m pretty close with my mom, but you and auntie were always on another level. She was really involved in your life and she expected a lot of things from you ever since we were kids. That probably included a wife, maybe a brat or two. Yeah, she was like a mother to me too, but I don’t think us falling in love was ever part of her plan.” He shrugs. “I ruined her plans, she ruined mine. I figure that makes us even.”

“Ugh. Iwa-chan.” Tooru rolls his eyes. “Your mind works in such simple ways, like some caveman.”

Iwaizumi jabs his side as retaliation, then grumpily filters out into the hallway alone.

Tooru quickly swipes all of his things into his basket before rushing out after him, sparkling with amusement and laughing, his hands put together, “Don’t be mad, Iwa-chan. You’d make a handsome caveman, probably!”

Iwaizumi glares at him before quickening his steps, to leave him in the dust.

They eat a small, quiet dinner in the dining hall, and Iwaizumi’s surly mood doesn’t break until Tooru tentatively places extra tofu in his bowl and looks at him with an expectant smile, knowing he’s about to be forgiven. Afterwards, they sip green tea by the windows in front of the inn; if the night hadn’t been too cold to permit it, Tooru might just have given in to the urge to walk out into the nature and spend a night under the stars with Iwa-chan, the way they once used to do years and years ago during training camps while the team slept on.

The mood is light and feathery by the time they return to their room, and Tooru releases a dreamy sigh. _“Ah._ Hot springs just can’t be beat. I really think you should invest in a hot tub for your apartment, Iwa-chan. We could put it in the spare room.” When Iwaizumi seems likely to disagree, he adds, in a tone like he’s dangling bait above his head, “It would give me a reason to come visit more....?”

Iwaizumi fixes him with a bland look. “Yeah. Of course. Don’t hurry back on _my_ account or anything, _please.”_

“Aww. Are you saying you miss me when I’m gone? You should be more honest with your feelings, you know. Don’t be shy!”

“Stupid. Don’t you have ears? That was me begging you not to come back.”

“...How _very_ rude of you.”

Iwaizumi is sniggering as he unlatches their closet and pulls out their bedding. The worker who had brought it for them that first night had gone still at the sight of two men behind the door, looking between them and the double futon with a confused stare. One frosty smile from Tooru, however, had been enough to drain his face; he had not returned but had also not uttered a word about them to another soul, though Iwaizumi had flicked the back of Tooru’s head for trying to scare a child.

Remembering the injustice of it all, still a sour point from their trip, Tooru scowls. “You really should be nicer to me, Iwa-chan. We won’t get to see each other for a long time after this trip. Is this how you want me to remember you?”

“What I _want,”_ Iwaizumi retorts, “is for you to grab the other end of the futon.”

He huffily does as told, helping Iwaizumi to unroll the bedding flat over the tatami mats and pull back the summer blanket for them to squeeze into. Once his contacts have been replaced with glasses, he collapses onto his side of the futon with a noisy sigh.

Iwaizumi’s face suddenly appears in his vision. He’s glaring. “And what was that sigh for?”

Tooru rolls over, to stare instead at the far wall. “Nothing.”

“Oi.” Something that feels suspiciously like a toe prods into his back. “You’ve been yapping all night about coming back to visit and not seeing each other for a long time and all that crap—don’t think I didn’t notice. Why don’t you stop being a cryptic eight-year-old for once in your life and just tell me what’s on your mind?”

Tooru considers this, then quickly rolls back around and scrambles up into a sitting position. From behind his lopsided glasses, he stares down Iwaizumi with a ferocious glare and says, “Come to France with me.”

The declaration is met with a stunned reaction. Then Iwaizumi blurts out, “The _hell?”_ After a few seconds tick by and he processes better, he tacks on, “I can’t just skip out on work for that long.”

“Oh, _spare_ me.” Tooru impatiently pushes up his glasses with a huff. “We’re literally here celebrating you paying off your shop. You’re doing good enough to take off for a while. You could probably even afford to hire another worker to pick up the slack. Don’t try to argue with me, I help you with your budget reports!”

Iwaizumi seems unconvinced, despite the sound arguments. “What would I even do there?”

 _“Whatever_ you want, Iwa-chan!” Tooru splays his arms as if to say, _hey, the world is your opportunity,_ which was a real slogan on one of Iwaizumi’s tacky T-shirts. “We’ll be in a foreign country where nobody knows us. And it’s France. _Paris._ We can go strolling down the markets, visit the famous tower, try eating French snails. You can sit in on my practices and cheer me on in the stands and keep me _company_ in our hotel room.”

His hand comes up to rest suggestively on Iwaizumi’s chest, transferring heat through the thin fabric of his yukata. It would have been a successful tactic if he’d still been wearing his contacts instead of his dweeby glasses, Tooru is sure of it, but for now Iwaizumi gives no reaction to the touch.

“So basically,” he retorts, flatly, “I’d be your trophy husband.”

“I mean, nobody said anything about marriage. But if that’s what you want to call yourself.”

He grins happily, and Iwaizumi seems to soften, seeing it. He puts one hand over Tooru’s, his gaze not wavering from his face even when Tooru lightly pushes back the fold of his yukata, revealing a sliver of his chest so their skin could make contact. Iwaizumi doesn’t look away from his face but Tooru doesn’t look away from his chest.

“I want you there with me,” he murmurs, lightly splaying his fingers.

He pictures it: the harsh lights of a stadium beaming down from above, the roar of a crowd stomping their feet, the brightly colored jerseys on the other side of the net moving as a blur, and Iwaizumi in the stands calling out his name. He thinks he could win a gold medal with Iwa-chan cheering him on, he really does.

He leans in to burrow his nose into the crook of Iwaizumi’s neck, his fingers sliding a little further into the fold of his yukata, and breathes against his skin, “Come to France with me.”

“Oikawa…” A sighs seems to shake Iwaizumi’s body whole, immersed in the general aura of defeat. He relents, “Buy me a ticket and then I’ll think about it.”

A grin splits over Tooru’s face, even if he’d always known victory would surely be his. He pulls back his face, to press a sloppy kiss to Iwaizumi’s jaw and beam up at him. “First class, VIP, of course! Only the best for Oikawa Tooru’s lover.”

"Disgusting. Don’t call me that.”

Tooru suddenly splays his hands to finally unveil all of Iwaizumi’s wide chest from behind the folds of his clothes, and, breathing on his neck, he churrs, “Are you going to make me, Iwa-chan?”

Iwaizumi stares blandly at the hands fondling his body. “You can’t behave for even one minute, can you?”

Tooru’s only reply is to give his torso a gentle push; Iwaizumi falls backwards, releasing a quiet _oof_ when his back makes impact with the futon, and then again when Tooru climbs his body and his thighs come to fit snugly around his hips. His fingers trace a map up the expanse of Iwaizumi’s chest, feeling him out bare, and come to rest on his shoulders.

“Just think about all the victory sex, Iwa-chan,” he hums. “A strange hotel room, a foreign country. And my medal _on,_ of course.”

Iwaizumi groans. “That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said in your entire life.”

Tooru simply pins him to the bedding by melding their chests together, and his wicked smile dissolves when he descends upon him for a searing kiss. His tongue pushes in to lick against the roof of his mouth, and he loves the way he feels muscles tighten wherever he roams, responding to his touch, or how Iwaizumi gives in so thoroughly, scrambling to pull him closer by the back of his shoulders. Their kisses always contain a certain heat and Tooru could drink them in until his glass was empty and still never reach his fill.

 _“Mm,_ Iwa-chan,” he slurs, when they pull back. “What do you think is the policy for sex on airplanes? First class has to count for something, right?”

Iwaizumi fixes him with a muddled stare, a certain darkness gathered behind the emerald green of his irises. “You talk too much.”

Tooru just laughs, then kisses him again.

 

 

 

—

 

 

 

The smell of incense proliferates in the dewy room, inducing a sort of serene quality to the afternoon. The tired, portable fan clicks occasionally as it turns, chugging out lukewarm air to each corner of the room. Tooru feels it every so often when it whisks through his hair and cools the beads of sweat along his hairline. Spread flat on his stomach on this lumpy couch, his cheek meshed against a cushion, he can almost convince himself he’s cast away on a beach rather than trapped in this dingy office, falling in and out of sleep to the sound of a keyboard in use.

He blearily opens his eyes. Across the short distance, he watches Iwaizumi rifle through a stack of papers before turning back to his outdated computer, searching achingly slow for each number on his keypad.

“Good _grief,”_ he mocks. “I would rather pluck off all my eyelashes than watch you attempt to use technology for one more second.”

Iwaizumi looks over at him. “Do it. Might finally fix the whole face situation you have going on.”

“The only _face situation_ I have going on,” he replies, falsely sweet, “is that I’ve had to look at yours for too long.”

They fix matching scowls on one another. Then, just as quickly, the argument fizzles when Iwaizumi’s focus filters back to his computer and Tooru finally pushes himself up.

His spine protests with a dull ache when he rights himself, stretching languidly with his arms over his head. The room feels muggy with heat and the scent of sandalwood. The air conditioner had broken down just yesterday and the portable fan was a poor substitute, and the resulting heat in the room had started to attract the mosquitoes. They’d put out a coil of incense to keep them at bay, but frankly, Tooru has never been more sick of sandalwood.

“When are you getting the aircon fixed, Iwa-chan?” he complains, crossing the room.

Iwaizumi shrugs. “I’m fine. If it bothers you so much, you can foot the new one.”

 _“Stingy._ I’ll stop hanging out here if you’re not careful, you know.”

“Is that a promise?” He smirks. “Doesn’t the great, professional volleyball player have literally anything better to do than bother me at work all the time?”

“You know I’m leaving soon. And _then_ you’ll miss me, you’ll see.” He returns the smirk tenfold. “But you’re right. I _am_ great.”

His hand grips faded leather, and then he swivels Iwaizumi’s chair around to bring his attention away from the computer, who looks up at him with a single eyebrow arched. He picks up a stack of papers and presses them into Iwaizumi’s chest, then ushers him off the seat.

“Move,” he orders, quickly taking the chair for himself. “It’ll be so much faster if I do the typing and you just read off what you need me to input.” He glares distastefully at the ancient computer before him, wiping a layer of dust off the screen without even making a difference in the display quality. _“God._ This thing is a dinosaur and so are _you.”_

“Dinosaurs are friggin’ _cool,”_ Iwaizumi retorts, “so thanks for the compliment.”

Tooru angles back his neck to jeer directly in his face. “You really thought that was a good comeback? Tragic.”

Iwaizumi forcibly shoves his face back towards the computer.

They pass the afternoon crunching numbers in the tiny office. Iwaizumi reads off numbers from his stack of budget reports, his hand balanced on the armrest of the chair so he could lean over Tooru’s shoulder. Tooru types them up into a spreadsheet with adept speed, occasionally mourning how romantic this entire scenario could have been if the room wasn’t currently so ripe from the summer heat.

When the clunky noises from the garage dissolve suddenly into angry voices, Iwaizumi slips out to settle an argument between his workers and ends up sending both Tanaka and Kyoutani home early. After that, the time they spend at the computer is peaceful and productive, interrupted only by the occasional chirr of the portable fan. By early evening, they pack up the office, lock up the garage, and start down the quiet street together.

“So I was looking at those reports,” Tooru says, thoughtfully, “and it looks like the shop’s doing really good these days! I’m impressed, Iwa-chan!”

“Only took four years to get here,” Iwaizumi grunts.

“It looks like you’ll be able to pay it off pretty soon.” He smiles, saccharine sweet, and purposely lowers his lashes. “I hope you haven’t forgotten about the hot springs, Iwa-chan.”

“How could I forget? Fifteen hours trapped in a car with you? I have nightmares about it every other week.”

 _“Ohh?”_ His smile takes on an innocent edge, meaning it’s anything but. “How do you know it takes fifteen hours? Did you look it up?”

Iwaizumi pointedly turns red, and jabs him in his side. “The only thing I looked up was how to make a murder look like an accident. Crappykawa.”

Tooru’s smile only becomes more infuriating, and he suddenly coils his fingers around Iwaizumi’s, threading them together and swinging their joined hands in wide motions, like they’re eight-years-old again and skipping home from the pond caked in mud and algae.

Iwaizumi tenses and quickly checks over their shoulders for stray eyes, but only sees an empty street. “Stupid,” he chides, trying to break free. “Be more aware, would you? This is a public place and you’re not just anyone, you’re a professional athlete. If someone recognizes you…”

“Then I’ll bribe them with an autograph, of course!” He laughs again but it’s a tighter sound this time, and with one final squeeze, he lets their hands fall apart.

It’s an arid sort of evening, not made any cooler by the approaching sunset. These are the kinds of summer nights he and Iwa-chan used to live for; scooping fireflies into jars, setting off sparklers in their backyards, wading knee-high in the local pond, collecting flowers to bring home to their mothers. Tooru knows those nights are long gone.

But there are new kinds of nights, with terrible movies and half-empty beer cans and laughing drunkenly over their shitty jokes and, more recently, pulling off their shirts in the heat and neck kisses on their lumpy couch. He could get used to these nights. Even months and years and decades from now, when their relationship is no longer so new, he hopes they’ll always have these kinds of nights.

A finger suddenly drops between his eyebrows, forcibly smoothing out the wrinkles there from the surprise. Tooru blinks, then meets Iwaizumi’s eyes.

“And what are you thinking so hard about?” Iwaizumi questions, driving his finger in deeper.

Tooru dodges, batting his hand away. “Just that… it’ll be hard going back, this time.”

He’s not so sure how he’s going to bear lonely nights in his apartment anymore, falling asleep alone in his bed or watching the moonlight on his ceiling, knowing what would be waiting for him in Sendai. He’s lived that sort of life long enough, but Iwa-chan is his now.

Iwaizumi shrugs. “It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”

“But that was before.” Tooru frowns. “Distance always makes things complicated. Are you telling me you’re not worried at all?”

“Course not,” he huffs, and scratches his head in the endearing way he often would back in high school, when stuck on a homework problem or a tricky volleyball play. Tooru nearly melts seeing it, even before he says, “A few kilometers never made you any less insufferable, so it sure as hell’s not going to make me like you any less. So stop worrying, dumbass.”

Tooru fists his T-shirt over his heart, pretending a shiver rakes his body. “My god. That’s so romantic and I’m _swooning._ I’m really swooning, Iwa-chan, and you have to catch me because my knees are about to give out, Iwa-chan, _please—oof!”_

A well-placed punch into his side sends him stumbling backwards, and Iwaizumi stalks off down the road filled with rage. Tooru recovers with lightning speed and follows after him, cackling loudly. Occasionally he’ll pretend to faint onto his back, or drum his fingers along the back of Iwaizumi’s neck to watch goosebumps erupt along his skin from the feathery touch, getting thrown off each time to no avail. He’s still badgering him, full of glee, “Hey, Iwa-chan, hey, tell me you like me again, Iwa-chan,” when the apartment comes into view and Iwaizumi stutters to a stop.

He calmly peels Tooru off his back, picks up one of his hands, and wraps his own around it.

Tooru blinks, the shock pulling him back into sobriety, and stares at him for long enough that he becomes embarrassed and an undertone of red rises into his usual color.

“There’s no one here,” is all he mutters.

Tooru stares as they resume their path, now with their hands linked. The tips of Iwaizumi’s ears have turned into little red buds just the way he loves them, and even from just his back, it’s clear he’s embarrassed by his own candor. It’s the most endearing thing and Tooru feels his heart swell to bursting.

“So _romantic,_ Iwa-chan,” he mumbles, but this time it's wholly sincere, and he bites down hard on his lip to stifle his smile.

They cross the walk up to the building together. They step over the tricky landing together, and climb the rickety steps, and outside Iwaizumi’s apartment, Tooru fits his key into the lock like he’s done an infinite number of times, but never before like this: his love fulfilled, his dreams clear and attainable, his heart unburdened, his life so light and happy and content. He could come back to this apartment every day for the rest of his life, he thinks, if Iwaizumi would always be here waiting for him. This is truly _home,_  and he loves it.

The door clicks shut behind them.

 

_fin._


End file.
